


band on the run!

by ninemoons42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Alternate Universe - Orchestra, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Brooklyn, Bucky Bear - Freeform, Classical Music, F/M, Inspired by Music, M/M, New York City, Rock Stars, Rock and Roll, Teddy Bears, YouTube, music video
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-23 03:36:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 60,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2532638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes leads the viral sensation rock group De Corday to Kings University to shoot a pair of music videos. On the way, he finds a cover of one of their singles, performed on solo violin by Steve Rogers, and he maybe falls a little bit in love on the spot.</p><p>Then they get to Kings and the leader of the chamber orchestra that's going to play with De Corday IS Steve Rogers. Duets, emotions, unexpected news, and a passel of De Corday-themed teddy bears ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	band on the run!

**Author's Note:**

> Art by Not All Bees: master post [HERE](http://notallbees.tumblr.com/post/103029481870/i-was-so-delighted-to-end-up-illustrating-not-one). It was such a blast to work with her! Please send her lots of love!
> 
> Best read with [THIS](http://8tracks.com/ninemoons42/band-on-the-run-a-special-mix-by-steve-rogers-and-bucky-barnes) playlist, which contains a selection of the music that inspired this BB.

**prologue**

_De Corday at the Beacon: Home Run for the Hometown Act_  
by Ororo Munroe

This isn’t the first time I’ve ever been backstage at the Beacon Theatre, hours before a concert that’s been four years and several viral singles in the making - but it is the first time I’ve ever been backstage at the Beacon Theatre, having a tea party with five solemn-looking teddy bears. They’re all dressed up in very familiar outfits, though I have yet to receive an explanation for the fact that all of their eyes are covered: comic book superhero masks for the most part, except for the one with the bright yellow goggles and the one with the black sunglasses.

“Gift from a fan,” James Buchanan Barnes - known as “Bucky” to the members of his band and to its fans alike - says as he joins me at a table that’s been hastily cleared of sheet music and set lists. All of them? He nods and points out the consistent shapes of the bears’ ears. He looks like he might be blushing. “Yes, all of them. Um, she’s really talented. I’ve had people ask me if she takes orders.”

He introduces the bears, though it’s relatively easy to guess which might be who from the outfits. Peggy Carter, Bobbi Morse, Melinda May; and the bear in the suit is none other than De Corday’s manager, Phil Coulson, an old hand in the New York City music scene (he of Anna-Marie and the Rogues fame, as incandescent an act as it had been short-lived). 

I ask him about his namesake bear’s blue coat. One short burst of laughter and a paper cup full of tea for me later, he says, “I wore a coat like that for a couple of years while we were still getting started. It had a wing motif on the arm, like an insignia of some kind. I thought the coat had belonged to a soldier, or something, I don’t know, I just got it from a rummage sale for a few bucks. It was a good coat. And then I lost it. It was a good coat, you know? So I might have actually gone nuts for a while. There was a hashtag.”

His face darkens, briefly, and I remember the whispered stories, the bits of grainy security camera footage, showing a man who looked remarkably like James Barnes, busking on the sidewalk and in subway stations, mostly in and around Brooklyn. Five years ago, no one was paying attention to the music he created on a battered half-sized electronic keyboard. That was then.

This is now. I steer him away from the topic and ask him about the band so far. They’ve redone their breakout hit, “Scylla and Charybdis,” at least three times, the most recent being by way of a collaboration with the Kings University Chamber Orchestra and the Kings University Concert Chorus. A million views in just the first three days - almost as fast as when the original version went viral. The catchy tune sings about a familiar turn of phrase and turns the original mythological story on its head; that the new video includes powerful voices and a new spin on the original sound is a bonus. 

“We just came back from Japan,” Barnes offers, after a moment, “and I’ve never heard crowds scream like that before. Um, I don’t know where they keep their voices. Just - pure overwhelming noise, with our names somewhere in the mix. All of our names. They knew who each one of us was.” He shakes his head and grins. “I didn’t know that the music had traveled so far.”

What are they expecting from this weekend’s concerts? His smile becomes tentative again. He asks me if I’m coming to either night, and says, “You might want to wait until after tonight to post your piece. Or, well, after the whole weekend. We’ve got a few things planned. You maybe might not want to miss them.”

(The surprise at the Saturday night concert turns out to be a new song, stripped-down and yearning, called “Stephen Hall”; and on Sunday night Peggy Carter takes center stage to belt out a flashy, powerful cover of “Pompeii” by Bastille, yet another band riding the crest of a meteoric rise. 

(Both songs receive a rapturous response, with lighters flickering to life in the packed theater.)

I ask him about what’s next for the band. There are plans for a new album, though he says he’s still got time to figure out what he wants to sing about next. He says he wants Peggy or Melinda to perform on lead vocals, but in order to do that, he has to write them the right songs.

_Edited to add:_  
_PHOTO CAPTION - On the sidewalk outside the Beacon Theatre at the end of a series of concerts, De Corday front man “Bucky” Barnes and an unnamed male companion hold hands as they wait for a taxi._

*****

**PLAY SIDE A**

Steve still dreams about chalk dust and scraped knees, about sneakers with ragged-ended shoelaces and primary-color-striped shirts, about singsong rhymes and being picked last for tag.

The memories are fading, a little - but not the faint pine odor of rosin. Late-afternoon sunlight slanting across a table, across a matte black case only faintly scratched around the lock and the edges.

The first time Steve had ever seen a violin up close.

_A golden Thursday afternoon with a faraway nip in the wind that beat the grass on the playground flat. Exercises in math and history; the combined scratch of twenty pens moving across twenty pieces of ruled paper; his left shoe pinching his little toe._

_And the teacher, Mr Phillips, looking up at a knock on the door. A whispered conference with someone Steve recognized - the principal, Mrs Khan - and someone he didn’t._

_A kindly-faced old man with his gray and white hair in a neat but corkscrewing halo around his head. “Like Einstein,” one of the girls in the back had giggled - was it Gillian or Janet? - making Steve grin and then try to hide that grin with his hand._

_“Just in time for free period,” Mr Phillips had said. “It’s a pleasure and an honor to meet you, Professor.” The two men shaking hands, and the principal nodding and looking pleased as she came in and closed the door and took the seat that Mr Phillips offered her._

_“Class, this is Abraham Erskine,” Mrs Khan said as Mr Phillips strode to the back of the room._

_More laughter from the students behind Steve when the newcomer hopped up onto the teacher’s desk, as though he were just like them - except that the difference was, they weren’t allowed to sit atop that table._

_Professor Erskine had had a quiet voice, but one that made Steve lean in and focus: “Anyone here like music? Raise your hands, tell me what you listen to.”_

_Answers from all over the classroom. Finally Professor Erskine had glanced Steve’s way, and Steve had said, “The people next door like to listen to U2. I think their music is strange, but I can’t stop listening to it.”_

_A quirk of a gray eyebrow. “Your neighbors have interesting taste, young man; that might be a good thing.”_

_Next, a question about composers. “Is anyone here familiar with Beethoven? Mozart? Chopin? Tchaikovsky?”_

_“_ Swan Lake _?” Tess asked from the last row._

_“Good. You dance ballet?”_

_“No, but my sister does.”_

_A bright, startling smile. Professor Erskine looked like a kid when he smiled. “So. Tchaikovsky. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, and the national dances, which some of you might hear at Christmas. But he did not just compose ballets. He wrote a lot of other things too. He composed for this,” and here the professor tapped his violin case. “I would like to play for you, and perhaps later you can tell me if I’m any good.”_

_Even the principal had looked down to hide her smile at that, leaving Steve to wonder - until there was no more time to think._

_Because Professor Erskine had taken a violin and its bow out of the case, and he looked like he was holding on to something important._

_He raised the violin to his shoulder. He closed his eyes. The bow hung over the strings for a moment._

_“He looks like he’s about to cry.” Steve glanced over his shoulder and nodded agreement in Jack’s direction, and he wasn’t the only one._

_And then Professor Erskine began to play._

“Wake up, Steve,” someone says, in the here and now.

He opens his eyes.

He’s not really surprised his cheeks are wet.

Someone leans over him. A familiar face, sporting, oddly enough, nearly the same wild head of salt-and-pepper hair as Professor Erskine. “You okay?”

Steve smiles, dashes the tears away, struggles to sit up. His blanket resists him for a moment. “Hi, Bruce. I just had a good dream, that’s all.”

Bruce smiles, slight and lopsided, but he looks cheerful for all that he’s still wearing yesterday’s stained and crumpled shirt, for all that his forearms are liberally laced with sleep-creases. “Sorry for interrupting it, then. But - well. You did ask me to wake you up.” An enormous yawn that he can’t quite completely contain in his sleeve. “Why are you even awake right now?”

“I want to practice,” is all Steve says.

“Like you don’t get enough of that already,” Bruce half-grumbles.

“Pot, kettle, black,” Steve says, fondly. If Bruce is still sleepy at nine in the morning it’s because he stayed up half the night doing the exact same thing that Steve is about to go and do now.

“Go away, Steve,” Bruce says, grinning and flopping back across his bed.

“Yeah, yeah, going now, not interested in _Symphony for Snoring_ by Bruce Banner. We still on for later?”

“Depends on how you define later, but I’ll try to catch up.”

“Answer your damn phone or I’ll sic Natasha on you,” Steve says.

“Yespleasebye,” Bruce says, just the one word and another huge yawn, and Steve chuckles and throws on his battered jacket and heads out the door.

He finds a squashed and crumpled beanie in one of the pockets of the jacket and is grateful to put it on. There’s a fierce spring breeze blowing, hard enough to make his ears hurt. It’s too late to go back and fetch his gloves, though. He settles for turning up his collars and sticking his hands in his pockets.

It’s a good thing that there’s been a recent craze for hand-decorated carrying straps for the various kinds of bags and cases that the music students lug around. Steve’d be able to pick his violin case out of a crowd in a hurry. Three uneven pompoms hang off one of the buckles of the extra-wide strap: red, white, and blue, half a friendly joke and half a token of appreciation. Bruce’s violin case sports a similar trio of pompoms in green and white and purple, made by the same hand.

Steve clatters over a bridge and breaks into a run. Keys jingling heavily in his pocket. Some of those keys are for his dorm room and for some of his boxes and bags. He doesn’t reach for them as he enters a low-slung building with lots of wide windows, with brick- and ivy-clad walls. Instead he reaches for the set painted bright red, and he jogs up a set of stairs and approaches a door marked with the name _A Erskine_.

The large desk in the first room he enters might be somewhat dusty, but everything on top of it is familiar and all in neat order, and as he passes by Steve smiles at the jar of greenish-black ink next to the blotter, at the stack of spiral-bound notebooks.

He heads into the adjoining room, small and mostly bare; there are three chairs stacked in the corner, next to two antique wooden music stands. He traces a curve in worn wood, soft comforting burr under his fingertips.

Against the window the rain begins to beat a wisp of a rhythm, uneven and quiet and soothing.

Now Steve takes a deep breath and tries to center his thoughts. A series of trills, ascending and then descending. Plucking at eighth notes and then skimming over them. Enunciation and legato.

He sets his violin case down on the floor. The weak light in the room is absorbed by the red felt lining. Shapely wood under his fingertips. Strings, taut, ready to sing.

The little cake of rosin in his pocket is cracked down the middle, but safely contained by its plastic shell.

Bow at the ready, violin tucked neatly beneath his chin, Steve reaches for the memory of that grade-school day. A single violin, a single player, and an astonishing range of expression: a melody that fluttered and soared, full of power and incredible grace.

Waltz time, Steve thinks now, and he takes a deep breath, imagines an orchestra playing with him. He waits for his cue, and when it comes he closes his eyes, sees a room full of bright dancing colors, and draws out the first notes, skipping, sweetly playful.

///

The music is loud and indecipherable, the booze is strong enough to knock him right onto his ass, and next to him there’s a redhead wreathed in smudged black eyeliner and sweet musty smoke, and he thinks it might be a good night.

“Gin and tonic,” the bartender says, and Bucky turns around, turns back to the man, and raises an eyebrow and the bottle in his free hand. “I’m still good, thanks.”

“I thought this was your drink - ” the bartender begins.

“It’s mine, and thanks,” the redhead says, and the smile that she flashes is all sharp edges and glittering annoyance, and the way she tilts her hips is nothing less than a declaration of war, and that’s before anyone clocks the fact that she is wearing killer stilettos.

Bucky laughs. “You should pay more attention to people, dude, I come here pretty often when we’re in town and I always order beer, and _she_ orders gin and tonics every-fucking-where she goes. Right, Peggy?”

Peggy shrugs, extravagant and one-shouldered, and grabs her drink; she downs half the glass in one gulp. “Adequate. Less lime on the next one,” she tells the flustered bartender, and then she goes and sits on Bucky’s knee. “Bored now,” she announces. “That or I want to kill the DJ.”

“Please don’t do that, we’d hate to have to see you off while you go on the run in the most glamorous way possible. We’ll check out the next place and see if it’s better,” he says, laughing at her as she pouts.

Bucky settles the bill, and follows Peggy through the crowd, which is bouncing madly to a song that sounds like all of the other songs they’ve already played at this club tonight.

He yawns, and shakes his head, and dodges a pair of wildly flailing arms.

They’re almost at the door when Peggy stops, and that means Bucky, still dogging her heels, stops as well. He’s close enough to see her shoulders go tense.

“I bet you’d look damn good riding my dick,” the white guy in the sleeveless shirt and the backwards trucker cap tells Peggy, and Bucky sighs very quietly, takes a step back as far as the roiling crowd will allow him.

He really, really doesn’t want to get in Peggy’s way.

And he watches her clench her right hand into a fist, watches her tilt her head and wind up and then sock the idiot right in the jaw - all in slow-motion high-definition bullet time.

Until one of the idiot’s idiot friends yells and tries to charge Peggy - which, no, that’s not happening, she’s too used to these things - and that means _Bucky_ has to think fast, because the idiot friend’s charge puts him right in Bucky’s face.

So Bucky grins his best shit-eating grin, braces his feet - and chops the idiot friend in the throat.

After that, it’s chaos, but it’s the kind of chaos that Bucky enjoys because the next thing he knows _three_ of the bouncers have joined the fight on Peggy’s side. Not so much the idiot - already out cold, thanks to Peggy’s formidable uppercut - and soon, not so much his friends either, but Bucky’s still a little bit wound up when they’re finally out on the sidewalk beneath the coldly glittering night sky.

Bucky’s phone rings.

“I had a feeling _something_ was going to happen,” Phil tells him, and Bucky grins and pins his phone between his ear and his shoulder. He’s half listening to Peggy as she tells the bouncers about the boxing lessons at her gym. “Just tell me the two of you are all in one piece. You’ve got that web talk show to talk to in the afternoon.”

“We’ll sing, we’ll dance the salsa, we’ll talk their ears off,” Bucky says, cheerfully. The adrenaline rush is still jumping up and down on his nerves, and the world is too bright and too sharp and leaning a little bit sideways. “Peggy did most of the heavy lifting.”

“Of course she did. It’s what she does,” Phil says, and he sounds proud, maybe, just a little.

Bucky’s happy to be recognized and sign autographs and tell an embellished version of what happened in the club to the gaggle of girls who accosts him and Peggy later on, and he still finds time to tease Peggy about the bouncers. “If you go out with any of them, it means I can stay home and sing shitty karaoke by myself, which would be awesome,” he says, and he’s careful to step aside to escape a sharp elbow in his ribs.

“Oh, please,” Peggy says, but she’s laughing immediately afterwards.

And then Phil shows up with Bobbi riding shotgun and Melinda in the back seat, and as soon as Bucky’s closed the door he starts up a chant of, “We want pancakes!”

“Breakfast! Breakfast!” Bobbi sings, and soon Melinda and Peggy are harmonizing with her.

Phil shakes his head and tells them that they’re idiots, and Bucky grins, because these people are his friends, and Peggy hits like two tons of bricks on stiletto heels, and life is good.

(They get recognized in the restaurant and have to sign autographs there, too.)

(During the interview with the people from the web talk show Peggy gives her own version of the nightclub incident. They eat it up with a spoon. Bucky nearly dies trying to hold his laughter in. People tweet in to the show and ask him if he’s about to throw up or something of the sort. Rather the opposite. Peggy blushes a triumphant kind of red that clashes with her hair.)

///

“I have no idea where we’re going, we’re walking around in circles,” Bruce complains.

Steve makes a face, glances at the crumpled piece of paper in his hand, and says, “Just a little bit further, and we can sit next to that wall over there.” He takes Bruce’s violin case from him and leads him over and makes Bruce sit down first.

Sweat darkens the collar of Bruce’s shirt. “Whose idea was this anyway?”

“Thor’s,” Steve says, leaning against the brick and ivy. “Tony’s just enabling him. I think. Or that’s what I’d like to think. For my sanity’s sake.” Written on the paper is an address in one of the city’s more well-to-do neighborhoods, and Steve is feeling a little bit out of his depth.

“I give up, I’m too hungry, let’s turn back,” Bruce says, fanning himself with his hand.

Steve swallows and it burns, a little, going down. He could use a tall glass of water. He could use the crunch of ice between his teeth. He doesn’t have to care for his voice. “Yeah. Let me just make a phone call. Let them know we’re ditching them.”

A minute of ringing passes. Steve frowns, checks to make sure he’s calling the right number. He’s not entirely sure what use Tony Stark could have for _three_ mobile phone numbers. He’s calling the one that Tony most recently called him with.

“Uh, Steve,” Bruce says.

Steve looks up, looks at him, follows his pointing finger.

There’s a Beemer bearing down on them, sleek dark gray.

The car comes to a smooth stop at the curb, and Steve steps forward, and when the driver’s side window slides down Natasha’s there, grinning. “We kind of thought you’d get lost. Guess we were right.”

Behind Steve, Bruce says, “Oh my god you’ve saved us thank you Natasha,” and Steve agrees, wholeheartedly.

Bruce gets into the back seat with his violin and Steve’s, and flops over onto his side. “I intend to sleep,” he tells Steve. “Sit with Natasha.”

“Sleep? We’re like ten minutes away,” Natasha says.

“Then I’m going to sleep for ten minutes.”

Steve laughs and buckles his seatbelt, and the car purrs happily around him as Natasha pulls out. “Thanks for coming to get us. We’re - kind of ignorant about this part of the city.”

“Aren’t we all? Well, except for Tony, of course.” She smiles and hangs a left. “I’ll tell you a secret. Or I’ll show it to you. I can’t quite tell which.”

Steve raises an eyebrow at her.

Instead of replying, Natasha simply takes another left-hand turn - and almost immediately drives right through an ornate iron gate, all tall curves.

“Are you kidding me? We didn’t even travel that far - ” Steve blinks, takes in the brick and ivy, and gets it. “So we were already in the right place?”

“Yeah, it’s just that there’s just the one gate,” Natasha says.

“And we thought we were walking in circles!”

“Maybe you should have kept going.” Natasha starts to laugh: sparkling sharp amused.

After a moment, Steve starts laughing as well. “Are you telling him about this or am I?” he asks, eventually, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at Bruce.

“You’re not. Maybe I will. But not today,” she says as she gets out and opens the nearest passenger door.

She uses her feet to prod Bruce awake, gently, and Steve shakes his head and goes to retrieve his violin and follows her into the house. A confusing warren of corridors. Bruce shuffling along behind him. Many of the rooms feel empty.

At some point, Natasha stops and turns right back around and retraces her steps.

Bruce mutters, “It’s like deja vu all over again.”

Before Steve can call for another search party, Natasha pushes through a set of double doors in glass and iron. Beyond is a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows. Sun-warmed marble under his feet, and a gently vaulted ceiling.

There’s a grand piano at the far end of the room, and next to it a card table and half a dozen chairs. Scattered paper, most of it marked up with words or with musical notation. A soft breeze in the room, probably coming from the one open window.

A piece of paper flutters off the card table, and starts moving down the room toward them, stopping and starting as the wind catches capriciously at it. Steve watches Natasha trap it underfoot and then tilt her head to try and read what’s on the uppermost side.

“Hello,” Thor says, beaming, as he looks up from next to the grand piano. He looks like he’s playing Jenga with the books stacked around him. “Did you get lost?”

“Sort of,” Natasha says, beating Steve to the draw. “And what happened to the arrangement we were given yesterday? This,” and she picks up the sheet under her shoe, “is this something that makes sense to you?” And she strides over. Even the click of her heels on the marble sounds annoyed.

Steve looks at Bruce, and Bruce looks back at him. “Don’t ask me,” Bruce says as he takes his glasses out, polishing them on his shirttail. “We’re just here to provide the accompaniment, right?”

“Nope,” says a voice behind them.

Steve steps aside before he looks.

Tony walks right past him, clapping Bruce’s shoulder as he goes, and Steve doesn’t feel slighted in the least because Tony is also carrying three huge-looking books, which he deposits next to a grinning Thor. “You wanted big books, buddy, you got ’em, those’re the biggest I could find in ten seconds of looking around the library.”

“I remember where the library is,” Thor says. “If we need more, I will ask you for permission before I go.”

“Nope,” Tony says again, “no need to ask, you got it, knock yourself out.”

“What are you building?” Bruce asks, shuffling forward.

Thor pats the floor, and Steve watches Bruce sit down before putting his violin down, and it’s only when Natasha beckons him over with half a smile that Steve follows suit.

“Good, now you’re here and I’ve called out for pizza - you guys don’t like anchovies, right, I can’t stand them, entirely the wrong kind of fish to be putting on your food?” Tony says as he drops ungracefully onto the piano bench. “My hosting duties are done. Now we can talk about important things.”

“Please tell me you didn’t forget to order drinks,” Bruce says, looking amused. “Can’t eat pizza without sodas, or beer, but I’m guessing we’re sort of working.”

“Yep, we’re working, and yep, I ordered drinks,” Tony says. “They are even non-alcoholic drinks. I know what beer does to you, Steve. You look funny when you’re the color of ripe tomato.”

Steve snorts and shakes his head and grunts, slightly, when Natasha leans heavily on his shoulder. “You said something about important things?”

“That show. Thing. We have to do in three weeks,” Tony says. “Performing for visiting professors or something? Nat, help me out - ”

“I told you not to call me that,” Natasha says. “I don’t like nicknames very much.”

“And yet you call me _Tony_.”

“You don’t answer when I call you _Anthony_.”

“Because it’s a shit name.”

“Whatever,” Natasha says. To Steve, she explains, “Not just visiting professors; they’re more like visiting diplomats, I think. They all just happen to also be - educators. So there’ll be a welcome dinner and we’ve been asked to provide the entertainment.”

“What kind of music are you performing?” Steve asks, and he fishes his mobile phone from his pocket and gets ready to take notes.

“Here is the list of suggestions,” Thor says, offering another sheet of paper.

Steve scans the list, and one item in particular makes him look up and stare at the others. “You’re seriously considering performing the _War Requiem_?”

Thor might shake his head, but he’s grinning nonetheless. “Naturally not all of it. There aren’t enough of us, you see.”

“And we happen to have some seriously awesome voices,” Tony says, pointing to Thor and to Natasha and to himself in turn. “We’re still not as good as the whole kit and kaboodle, though, obviously.”

“It’s the poetry, isn’t it,” Bruce asks, after a moment. “You’re not really focusing on the music of the mass. You want to focus on the Owen stuff.”

“Yes, though we do need to create the mood of the requiem itself,” Natasha says. “We were hoping you could help us with that. Give us some suggestions. Set the tone.”

“In three weeks,” Steve says, shaking his head, but he’s also smiling. “Are you forgetting that we’re also, I don’t know, busy?”

“We would not have asked you if we did not believe that you were up to it,” Thor says.

Bruce laughs, shortly. “That sounds like a bribe. You’re picking up bad habits from these other two.”

“Good. Is it working?”

“Not enough,” Steve says, and he grins when he hears Bruce echoing him. “Ante up. We need more motivation. I mean, we have to figure out which bits of the requiem we’ll be focusing on. You guys are so not performing all four movements.”

Tony rolls his eyes, sighs, looks put-upon. “Yeah, we’re not, we can’t. And _yeah_ , I knew you were going to say that. So how about this. You guys know about De Corday? The band?”

“No, the assassin,” Bruce snorts. “Of course the band. We’re not idiots, Tony, Steve is a big fan. He practically has a shrine set up next to his desk. Posters and a couple of ticket stubs.”

Steve nods and knows he’s blushing. “I like their music. There’s something really angry and really compelling about them.”

“I had no idea you were a fan of theirs,” Thor says.

Steve shrugs, and remembers being introduced to the band via Youtube. Remembers rooting for them as they began to climb the pop-rock charts. Remembers running into other fans online, few and far between at first. Sometimes, when he’s sure there’s no one in the dorms to hear him, he plays their songs on his violin. He happens to like the ones with the historical and mythological allusions best. It’s not every day an up-and-coming group sings songs about labyrinths, about Scylla and Charybdis.

He knows that the major songwriting influence in De Corday is its lead singer.

“Well, Steve, good news: _they’re coming here_ ,” Tony says, with the air of a man in top hat and tails pulling a rabbit out of thin air.

Disbelief like a discordant note, shaking in Steve’s mind.

Natasha takes pity on him. “Not for a concert. Something even better. They’ll be shooting music videos with performers from among the music clubs. Our group’s been asked to join one of the sessions.”

“Cool,” Bruce says, and he really does sound awed.

Steve, meanwhile, is still a little bit speechless, and it must be written quite plainly on his face, because Thor reaches over and pats him gently on the shoulder, and tells the others, “Let him take that in before we proceed further. You seem to have thrown him entirely for a loop.” In an aside, he asks, “Did I get the idiom right?”

And distantly Steve hears Natasha respond: “You used it perfectly.”

De Corday. Coming here? To perform with the music clubs? _Music videos?_

“What’s the connection?” Bruce is asking. “I mean, I’d ask Steve except he’s zoned out. Did one of the band members come from here or something?”

“Two of them, actually.” Again it’s Tony who supplies the answer. “Bobbi Morse and Bucky Barnes. Not at the same time, I think. He was here for a couple of terms, and she was here for an entire year or something, and then they went totally viral and boom, off into the stratosphere, lookit them go.”

A hand on his shoulder. A sympathetic, mildly understanding smile. “Natasha,” Steve says. “You’re serious? This isn’t some kind of elaborate joke? Not like the Smithsonian?”

She crosses her heart, a quick and hidden gesture. “We’re serious. Both about the band coming here and about us being asked to perform with them.”

He doesn’t think about performing with his favorite band. He’s content to think about being able to watch from the sidelines. He’s content to think about being able to watch the magic from afar.

“Steve,” Natasha says. “You do know you’re likely to be pulled into this, aren’t you?”

He blinks at her.

She rolls her eyes at him, still looking affectionate - it’s in the particular quirk of her eyebrows, it’s in the way she looks at him, and this is something Steve Rogers is grateful for, that Natasha Romanova considers him a friend or at least someone to talk to. “Chamber orchestra. You and the chamber orchestra. I don’t think De Corday has the chops to get in with the symphony guys.”

“You never know,” Steve says, because he’s nothing if not actually practical. You learn to be practical when you only have yourself to rely on for a long time. “If one of them was in the symphony, or was trying out for it, then they’re going to get those guys, they’re not gonna get us.”

“Wanna bet?”

That makes him raise his eyebrows at her. Natasha has a - tendency - to make interesting bets. She has a photo of Steve wearing a spangly, sequined red-white-and-blue dress, with his blond hair curled into ringlets, to prove the point.

So he says, “No bet,” and wonders, and secretly he hopes she’s right.

“Everything okay over there?” Tony asks a few moments later.

Someone’s mobile phone is playing the De Corday song about labyrinths and Steve smiles, shrugs, reenters the conversation. “Okay. _War Requiem_. What exactly are you hoping to put on the program?”

“Oh, here we go,” Bruce says, grinning and shaking his head. “You’re going to do the thing.”

Steve pokes him in the shoulder, once, grinning back at him. “You’re welcome to drop out now.”

“Hell no, did I say I was going to back out?”

Thor laughs, claps Bruce on the other shoulder, and the pizza arrives at some point - Tony doesn’t tip because the delivery’s thirty minutes late, but Thor slips the harried-looking teenager ten dollars anyway - and they work their way through the food and the soda and soon the room is full of the scents of night-blooming flowers and the sweet sharp harmony of Natasha’s alto against Thor’s stately baritone.

///

Bucky makes a face and knows there’s no one there to tell him what he looks like.

He just feels like something’s off about the thing he’s currently writing. A handful of lines on the reverse side of a flyer for a local garage sale. Smudged pencil and scratched-out words, some of them corrected and some of them replaced.

In his defense, it’s been a long night heading into a long day. De Corday’d been top of the bill at the Quicksilver last night, and the crowd had screamed at them, screamed _for_ them, so loudly that he thinks he might still be vibrating from the echoes, over twelve hours and three breakfast-TV interviews later.

He used to have no audience at all. He used to know only indifferent crowds who couldn’t even spare a coin or two to throw into his cap.

This, however, this doesn’t change: after several hours of singing he’s exhausted, he’s running on fumes. 

Now he wants to write something new. He loves what they’re playing now, loves the pure crashing power of their words and music on stage, and he wants to write something new, and the handful of lines on the sheet of paper are, mockingly, not enough for a song.

_I knew, I knew_  
_If I landed_  
_When I landed_  
_That would be the death of me._  
_So I jumped_  
_And you, you never knew_

Maybe one of the others can come in and save him. They do that. They’ve been doing that for some time. He’s immensely, stupidly grateful for their presence. He’s just happy they’ve each learned how to put up with him.

Now he puts his hands in his hair and gets up. An anxious small circle paced into a threadbare carpet. A basic hotel room, with basic beds and a basic view and the climate control turned all the way up. He’s cold, and he’s already wearing fingerless gloves, and not even putting those gloved hands into his pockets can help him warm up.

He jumps up and down on the spot. Every landing sends a jolt through his calves and knees, bright warm shock that passes away far too quickly for his tastes.

That’s when the door opens.

He catches a glimpse of movement in the worn mirror: a black leather jacket and long dark hair.

“Hi, Melinda,” Bucky says. He jumps a couple of times more, just for good measure, and then he plunks himself back into the so-so armchair next to the window. On the low coffee table is his flyer and his stub of pencil. He likes dark leads, but he has to be careful when he writes, because darker leads mean more chances for smudging the words he’s trying to commit to paper. “How’s the family?”

“Flourishing,” Melinda says as she takes off her boots and her socks, as she puts her jewelry back in: three piercings in her right ear and four in her left, and each captive bead ring closes with a mottled green-and-white bead. The earrings go with the chunky bracelet she wears everywhere, family or not family: half a dozen elongated beads shaped like barrel dice, strung and knotted onto a braided black cord.

He watches her wash her hands and root around in one of the bags stashed in the closet for a comb - and she makes a small triumphant sound when she finds what she’s looking for. It’s different from most combs that Bucky’s seen: it’s double-sided, and the teeth are made of wood, divided so finely that they look like they’re not divided at all.

He can’t help but wince when Melinda sits down next to him and starts pulling that comb through her hair.

“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” she says when she spots him. When she encounters a snarl, she works at it patiently with the comb and with her fingers. There’s something soothing about her movements.

Though it doesn’t actually surprise him when eventually she smiles, shakes her head, and holds the comb out to him. “You want to make yourself useful?”

“I don’t want to damage your hair,” Bucky tells her, honestly. “I mean, I don’t know how that comb works.”

He thinks he deserves the eyebrow she raises at him. “It’s a comb. You use it to groom your hair.” The other eyebrow goes up. “Or would you like me to demonstrate on you instead?”

“No no no,” Bucky begins, and then her hand’s around his wrist, strong and shapely and he can’t fight the way she looks at him, stern and amused at the same time.

And that is how he finds himself sitting on the floor, with Melinda’s hands in his hair.

There’re a few moments of yanking and muttered apologies, during which Bucky gets smacked upside the back of his head at least four times. After that, however, he can settle down, and the rhythm of the comb is actually rather soothing. He’s starting to see the appeal in the blasted thing, and says so out loud.

“That is because you don’t take care of yourself,” Melinda says, half-admonishing. “You don’t sleep enough. You don’t eat enough. At least you bother to take baths, but ugh, your hair, it’s a rat’s nest and worse. And you’ve been awake for hours. Bucky. You’re not out on the streets any more. You do know we worry for you, right, we’re not just the people who make you look and sound good every night?”

Bucky holds up a finger. “You do, like, a hell of a whole lot more than just make me look and sound good. You’re a million fucking times better than I am. People go absolutely hog wild for when you sing. I mean, the hits on that video someone bootlegged from the last time we were in Montreal. You didn’t even have to stand up from behind the drums. All it took was you singing that first note. Never been so happy to wear a set of ear plugs before. They were a fucking wall of sound, just for you. I was happy to get out of the way.”

That gets him another swat, but this one is much gentler, and he hears the soft chuckle behind his back and he thinks he’s said the right words.

Another pass through his hair. Bucky has to suppress the inexplicable and honestly rather serious urge to purr.

“Bucky.”

“Oh here we go,” he says, not quite under his breath.

_Swat._

“Ow.”

“I’m serious,” Melinda tells him. “Or maybe we should start by looking at the root of the problem. What is keeping you up at night?”

He shrugs. “I - okay, okay, I’ll tell you, because you’ll pull my hair or worse and you’d be totally justified so I couldn’t even try to get back at you.”

“You could never.”

“Yes, I could never,” Bucky agrees. A moment’s smile, then he sighs, and slumps a little. “I just - I don’t know if I’m doing it right. This isn’t exactly how my pipe dreams went when I was outside, you know? The gigs, the interviews, the occasional tweeting spree, when Phil lets me get my hands on his phone. Are we - are we still us now that everyone knows who we are? Do we still sound like we mean all of this shit? Like the words are still true?” He shakes his head, just a little, because he can feel her passing the comb through another section of his hair. “I don’t know, Melinda. I just don’t know. Maybe that’s why I can’t get this damn thing written. I just - I want to know if we’re okay. If people like what we’re doing.”

“I think I can answer that question.” The door opens again. Bobbi and Peggy, still wearing their sort-of disguises, arm-in-arm. Oversized shades, and in Peggy’s case, a baseball cap tugged low, hiding most of her red hair. They’re preceded by the smell of fried dumplings.

“Gimme, gimme,” Melinda says, releasing Bucky in order to make grabby-hand motions.

“You left your fucking comb in my hair,” Bucky mock-complains.

“Quit grousing, it’s a good look on you,” Bobbi says, complete with an exaggerated flirty wink.

“Oh god no,” Bucky says, and he barely gets out of the way before the two other girls land on the bed. Food being passed around. He gets a carton of salt and pepper spare ribs; when he’s passed a carton of plain white rice, he shakes his head and returns it, and trades it for fried rice.

Only then does he take the comb out; he takes his paper and pencil back as well, and for a few moments he’s actually distracted enough by the smell of dinner that he can’t help but wade into his food, manners be damned, though he’s aware of Melinda smirking at him.

“Sorry,” he mutters after he’s inhaled about half the carton of rice and three dumplings in rapid succession.

“Eat, eat,” Peggy says. She’s concentrating on her chopsticks. There’s a singular grace in the movement of her hand and wrist, even though she’s only trying to eat a spring roll.

“Food first, psychoanalysis later,” Bobbi adds. She hasn’t bothered with the chopsticks, although that might be because she’s balancing a large plastic bowl of hot and sour soup on her lap.

Bucky rolls his eyes at the three of them.

After most of the food is gone - save for another brown paper bag, which is for Phil, when he decides to come back - Bobbi smiles and pulls out the contents of one more package. “Special treat,” she says, “since we’re not singing for a couple of days, and no one will mind if we all sound like we’ve been screaming our lungs out.”

Four large plastic cups. The only thing they have in common are the black pearls that have settled to the bottom of each drink. Bright colors, and cold beads forming up the sides. “Earl Grey milk tea, honeydew milk tea, lemon and winter melon tea, and taro milk tea,” Peggy says, pointing to each cup in turn.

“Phil?” Melinda asks.

“He went to get his own,” Bobbi says. “You know how finicky he is with this stuff. He said he’ll catch up in a bit. I think he was trying to get in touch with the people at Kings. He thinks he’s got the choir nailed down; now he has to start talking to whichever orchestra’ll have us. Preferably a small group. It’d be a little more complicated to arrange the songs for a larger group.”

Bucky makes a face, even as he decides on the honeydew milk tea.

“That’s one more thing on the list,” Melinda says.

“List?” Peggy asks after a long slurp of the Earl Grey.

“Bucky,” Melinda says.

And immediately all three women look at Bucky with kindness and sympathy, and they should all look weird because of the drinks in their hands. They don’t. Three wise faces.

He starts talking, and he passes them his sheet of half-baked words - he can’t even call them lyrics yet, no one can sing those, he thinks - and they _listen_.

///

Steve lies in bed and listens, and the voice in his ears is a throaty growl, singing about a rock and a hard place.

In his mind he can hear a violin countering that voice, vibration against vibration.

The singer hits a run of rising notes, up and up into a crescendo of a scream.

On hearing the song for the first time, Steve’d felt all the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Such pure primal power in the words. He’d wondered about the singer, and where that immense strength had come from, to scream with such anguish, such tattered rage.

That shivering feeling is still with him even now. He knows the words to the song, he’s read some of the theories from the fan communities, he’s got the video in which the band had talked about the process of recording the track. It’s nice to have the analysis; it’s even better to still feel that stuttering electric pulse in his veins.

Enough that he’s happy he’s got the room to himself for tonight - no one’s going to complain, if he gets up and retrieves his violin and stands in the cramped space between his and Bruce’s beds. Surrounded by books and the seemingly endless piles of papers and photocopies.

He fiddles with his phone. Back to the beginning of the track. The growling bass and the threatening mutter of guitar and drums - and when the vocal line crashes through Steve leaps in headlong, following the singer’s lead, violent and breathless, hunched over his violin.

Three minutes in - just before that long wounded cry, the beginning of the song’s end - and someone suddenly knocks on the door.

Steve nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Hey, you alive in there?” a familiar voice asks.

Steve takes a deep breath - that does nothing to calm the frantic racing beat of his heart - and staggers over to the door, still with violin and bow in hand.

“Hi,” Carol says, and as usual her hair’s a spiked-out mess, and Steve always feels a little envious, because he can’t do that to his hair, can’t make his hair do that, not even if he used styling products. She, on the other hand, looks like she just rolled out of bed, complete with crumpled t-shirt sleeves and the pajama bottoms. “Sounded like bloody murder going on in here. I was kind of drawn to the noise.”

“No one’s getting murdered,” Steve says. “Just - music, you know.”

“Yep, I got that, thanks,” she says, and she comes into the room, and only when she sits down at Steve’s desk does he notice that she brought her clarinet with her. “I like music.”

Steve nearly chokes on his laughter. “I think that Bruce would call that one an understatement.”

“See, there, you’re better, you don’t look like you’ve been spooked any more.”

“You spooked me,” Steve grouses.

“Whatever,” Carol says. “What the hell were you playing? It sounded really familiar. And also kind of like heart attack music.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “‘Scylla and Charybdis’. De Corday.”

“You’ve got good taste,” Carol says as she checks her reeds. “And that’s one of my favorite songs of theirs, too. You wanna duet?”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “You got the song worked out?”

“Duh,” Carol says. “What part of _favorite song_ didn’t you understand?”

“Why do you like it?”

“Because it’s complicated. Because there’s something in it that makes me think of standing over the edge of, I don’t know, the Grand Canyon? Niagara? I mean, there’s kind of an idea of _jump or be pushed_ , and I like that a lot. I don’t care what that says about me. I just like the song.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and really, that sounds pretty good as a summing-up of the lyrics. He’ll roll with it. Besides, he’s kind of interested in knowing how Carol’s gotten around some of the more intricate melody lines.

“Ready when you are,” she says, and Steve nods and hits Play, and again he waits for the vocal line -

And Carol starts playing several measures before that, and the intro is already ominous on its own and somehow she makes it even darker, weirder, leading into the first words - Steve almost misses his cue, but when she raises an eyebrow at him he pulls himself together, yanks at the music, and the result is a startling cacophonous _ménage à trois_ of an argument, his violin against her clarinet against De Corday.

Somehow he makes it through the entire song this time without any interruptions, without any faltering, and Carol storms right through with him all the way to the very end, and when the scream comes and the music stops dead they look at each other, wide-eyed and breathless and, in Carol’s case at least, red in the face.

“Oh my god,” she says, at last, and then she’s suddenly collapsing at the foot of Steve’s bed, giggling so hard he thinks she might actually pull a muscle. “We should have video’d that. We should have filmed it. If we put it on Youtube we’d have been stars. I am an idiot. We could’ve used my phone,” she says between gasps for breath.

And, yeah, that kind of staggers Steve too, and he sits down hard on Bruce’s bed, just barely managing to put his violin and bow down. His hands are cramping, just a little. That’s not what he’s thinking about. What he’s thinking about is, they’d sounded so good. It had sounded like a concert stage in his head. It had been an excellent cover. “Don’t suppose you’ve got the strength to do it again,” he says, after several minutes’ worth of blank thoughts.

“Hell no, I couldn’t, too trashed now,” she says as she gets to her feet and hooks an ankle around the chair at Steve’s desk. She drops into the chair, and it squeaks at her in protest, and she squirms and puts her clarinet aside.

“Hey,” Carol adds, after a moment, “did you hear about the thing? About De Corday _coming here_?”

Steve nods. “Yeah. I got a heads-up from some of the choir people.” He shrugs, smiles, scratches the back of his neck. “Tony said they were still trying to talk to someone about the venue and about the instruments. How big a group they could perform with. The music would sound different,” he says, slowly, “if we were playing it, and if it were the symphony orchestra playing it.”

“Yep, that makes a lot of sense. But wow. What the hell are they doing or what the hell are they thinking of,” Carol says, admiringly. “Why mix their music in with ours? I know, I know, it’d be epic shit, just, here?”

“You know half the band’s from here.”

“Yeah, I’d heard about that, just didn’t think to look into it.”

“Bruce did,” Steve says. “He looked them up in the yearbooks. Neither Bucky nor Bobbi graduated, but they’re in some of the pictures.”

“Cool,” Carol says. Then she perks up. “If we get to play with them - Steve. Imagine the thing, Steve. What we did just now? It’ll pale by comparison. Orchestra _and_ choir playing De Corday music. _With_ De Corday. That would be - that would be fucking awesome.” Steve watches the smile grow on her face.

He nods, and swallows hard, and he wants this to happen just as much as she does.

///

“Tell me again,” Peggy says as she lifts the last bags into the van, “why we’re driving instead of doing the sensible thing and flying across the damn country?”

“Because we’re awesome people,” Bobbi says. “Because we’ve always done road trips.”

“We can afford other things now.”

“I like road trips,” Melinda offers.

“That’s a lot of oranges,” and Bucky grins as Bobbi eyes the shopping bag that Melinda is carrying. “Do I want to know where you got them?”

“My mom sent us about half a box. Or that’s what it feels like.”

“Wow. Can I have one?”

Melinda passes Bobbi the shopping bag, and then gets into the van. “Move over.”

Bucky does, and they end up sitting hip to hip, a little squashed between their bags and their instruments, but they’re still sitting and it’s still comfortable, so it’s all good.

Bobbi climbs in and takes a seat behind them, and she smells like oranges and like soap.

“Everyone ready?” The driver’s door opens and closes, and Phil Coulson’s looking back at them, temporarily without either his eyeglasses or his shades. “Comfortable?”

“Define comfortable,” Bucky says, grinning.

“Okay, I’m not going to engage with you,” Phil says, laughing.

“But you’re the manager,” Peggy says. She’s the last to actually get in, and she’s the first to buckle up. “It’s your job to make sure we’re okay.”

“You’re all okay, you’re just not all there,” Phil counters, to snorts from Bobbi and from Melinda.

Bucky rolls his eyes, and reaches over Melinda to lock the door, and is pressed back into his seat when Phil kicks the van into gear and peels off.

“Please make sure we get there in one piece,” Bobbi says, mockingly. “Can’t play or sing if we’re, you know, dead and roadkill.”

“No promises,” Phil says.

“Orange,” Bucky says, once they’ve made it out past the city limits. “Thanks, Bobbi.”

Melinda immediately takes the orange from him and starts peeling it with the penknife she carries around everywhere.

“Someone sing,” Peggy says. “And you don’t want me to start, because you’re all philistines and you don’t appreciate my taste in music.”

“We do, Pegs,” Bobbi says, “we just don’t know all the words.”

“Nonsense, it’s all English - you know, the language we all speak?”

Bucky waits until Peggy looks back at them, and that’s when he raises an eyebrow at her and says, “You sure you speak English? Because the last time you and I got into a fight - that wasn’t English. It sounded more like rage. And Irish.”

“Are we talking about the last time we had pancakes?” Melinda asks, offering him an orange section. 

“Yes,” Peggy says. “And the only way to engage drunk guys like those is - not in English.”

“More like fists and feet,” Bucky says with a big grin.

Peggy chuckles, and Bucky reaches over to her for a high-five. “One of these days, I’m gonna remember to shoot video of you kicking ass,” he says. “And then we’re going to put that video online.”

“No you’re not,” Phil says, “not until I edit in some suitable fight music, maybe some special effects.”

“Pegs doesn’t need special effects,” Bobbi counters. “Get with the program, Phil.”

The banter flies, and Peggy preens and Bucky catches her at it. It’s all good. It’s fun and games. Maybe this is why they’re not on a plane, flying and unconscious or bored.

Quiet does come, eventually, but this is also a good thing. Peggy and Phil talking quietly up front, and the sounds of digital candy-matching from the back courtesy of Bobbi.

Bucky gets his notebook out. Doodles in the margins: a cocktail dress, a random collection of musical notes, hands holding a book.

Among the fragments of lyric and melody is a larger drawing, something that takes up most of the ruled page: a magnificent weeping willow. Dark-shaded leaves and a vast spreading crown, with a wide shadow to match.

“That looks familiar,” Bobbi whispers from over his shoulder.

Bucky smiles, and rummages in his pocket for his pencil. “I could do better,” he offers.

“If you draw it again, do it on proper paper, and I’ll buy it from you. Put it in a frame.”

“So I’m guessing you’re happy to go back to Ohio?”

Bobbi shrugs. “It’ll be nice to see some familiar places again, you know? I had a few good experiences there. Kings was - well, you know about it, I don’t have to tell you. Lots of pretty places, if you knew where to look.”

“Don’t think I stayed long enough to see everything,” Bucky says, offering her a one-shouldered shrug. “You’re going to have to tell us where to go and what to see and all that.”

“Are you going to tell me you never got to the river?”

“Of course I went to the river,” Bucky says, and he smiles and ducks his head a little, remembering peach-scented perfume and a rueful little smile, and the feeling of lipstick smeared across his mouth. Forbidden musty burnt-paper smoke on the air, and fireworks exploding overhead. A sports game? Someone’s idea of a prank? He hasn’t thought about Kings in a few years.

“I wonder if Professor Erskine’s still around,” Bobbi muses, after a moment.

Bucky shakes his head. “I was never in any of his classes. I just heard a lot of stories about him. Good ones. He’s got a following, that one.”

“If by ‘following’ you mean a bunch of people who’re currently making waves, yeah, that part’s true. He’s got a knack, you know? Or at least I hope he still has it. A knack for finding people with talent. And not just for finding them.” Bobbi might be whispering, but she is also very close to bouncing in her seat. “He has a talent for knowing just how to encourage you.”

“Sounds like you really got a lot out of training with him.”

Bobbi nods. “It was the best year I ever spent at school. Any school. The year at Berklee doesn’t even compare.”

“Well, then, you’re taking me to see him,” Bucky says. “As soon as we get there. Assuming he’s still there, or that he’s not going to be one of the people we’ll be working with in the first place.”

“Last I heard he’d semi-retired,” Bobbi says. “I bet he’s up to something. He’s still got a symphony in him, I know it. Maybe even an opera.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow at her, and that gets him a vigorous hair-ruffling, and he can’t move away because Melinda is dozing on his shoulder, so he squeaks and causes Peggy to frown at him.

///

“Take it from the top?” Bruce suggests.

At the lectern, Natasha clears her throat and flips back a page.

Liturgical phrases soar through the air. Her voice is a richly shivering instrument, filling the room up with warm echoes, and Steve instinctively waves his right hand - which is still holding his bow - to the beat and the flow of her singing.

He’s sort of happy he’s sitting down. There is a gossamer kind of strength to the way Natasha sings. She makes it sound so easy. The very roof of the chapel seems to press down on her shoulders, friendly, as though wanting to hear every crystalline tone.

A beat of silence.

And then Thor’s voice joins Natasha’s. It doesn’t matter that he’s in one of the back pews. It doesn’t even matter that he’s _kneeling_. His voice is powerful, deep and dark, sweeping Steve’s senses with the power of a storm.

“You can see why we thought we were reckless enough to sing these bits,” Tony tells Bruce, mostly under his breath. “I mean, I’m good, I’m damn good, but I kind of pale in comparison next to those two.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Bruce says, nudging Tony’s shoulder. “You’re going to get to do one of the more important solos, after all. This particular program would kind of fall apart without it.”

Tony shrugs, extravagant, full of bravado.

Steve glances at the score, and puts his violin under his chin. He glances at Bruce, who’s taken over the conducting, and waits for his cue - a tiny nod - and he starts to play, very quietly, but enough so Tony’s voice rises against a melodic counterpoint of skittering notes.

Steve knows this part of the score fairly well, now.

Natasha’s voice, Thor’s, Tony’s - three well-tuned instruments.

Steve keeps playing into soft and thready echoes, until he drops out and the last notes are held by the singers alone, and he can’t help but grin and then clap his hand over his mouth because on the one hand, what they’re singing is solemn and grave - and on the other hand, there is something completely perfect and heart-rending in their harmony.

The applause that comes at the end of the song doesn’t come from him or from Bruce.

“Ah, there you are,” Thor says as Clint and Kate walk in, arm-in-arm. “Done with exams, I hope.”

“I just have one more on Sunday,” Kate says, “but I’ve studied for that one like you wouldn’t believe. Plus I like the piece I’m supposed to be working on. I think I’ll be fine.”

“You’re confident, good, that’s precisely what you need to be,” Natasha says as she strides down the aisle of the chapel.

As soon as she’s within reach Kate abandons Clint and jumps up onto Natasha’s back, and the two of them grin at each other, like conspirators hatching some kind of nefarious plan.

“Oh, sure, you look like that,” Clint says with a broad grin, “let me get out of the way. I’ve had a lifetime of the two of you being criminal masterminds.”

“No you haven’t,” Kate and Natasha say in unison.

Clint promptly goes to hide behind Thor.

“We waiting for anyone?” Tony asks.

“Carol,” Steve says.

“Yeah. Okay. Let’s call Darcy.” Tony flips out his smartphone and fiddles with it before putting it to his ear. “Hey. Gofer girl. Yeah, where’s our coffee, we ordered it an hour ago.”

“Coffee?” Darcy’s voice is tinny and full of suppressed laughter. “No one ordered coffee. Except me, and mine is really yummy and super cold and there’s lots of cream on top, and Tony? You’re not getting any of it.”

“We’ll see about that,” Tony says in a mock-threatening voice that makes Bruce snort and shake his head. “Anyway. Carol. Where is she?”

“On her way to you,” is the prompt reply. “There was a technical screw-up in one of the smaller performance rooms.”

“And she fixed it, of course.”

“Of course she did. So now you know where she is. Quit bothering me, Tony, I got a hot date and I really want to do my nails - ”

“Your _nails_?”

“Go fuck yourself, Tony,” Darcy singsongs, and then she hangs up, and Steve’s not the only one to laugh when Tony mutters something decidedly uncomplimentary, far too late for Darcy to hear.

Someone drops into the pew next to Steve, and he smiles and returns the fist-bump that Clint offers him. “I heard we’re about to have visitors,” he says. “I thought Carol was fucking pulling my leg when she told me all about it.”

“If she told you it wasn’t De Corday, she was pulling your leg,” Steve says.

“Holy shit,” Clint whispers, and then he laughs, looking surprised and incredulous.

Steve kind of feels the same way, because he’s only just received the news that the band wants the chamber orchestra to back them up, which means him and Bruce, which is the reason why Bruce has been listening to the band’s music more often than Steve as of late.

“What would they want with us?” Clint asks after he’s gotten over his giggles. “Just because they were here - ”

“Who the hell knows,” Steve says. 

“Wowzers.” Clint is shaking his head. “I went to a concert thing a couple of years ago, and they were on the bill, and they were the band that people were screaming about at the end of the night. I didn’t actually think they’d get big enough to, you know, shoot music videos, and do crazy shit like come here to perform.”

“Steve,” Carol says, then, and she squeezes into the pew on his other side. “Oh man, I have been up all night studying the De Corday sheet music. Some of the melody lines are, _whew_ ,” and she laughs. “You have your work cut out for you, you and Bruce and Kate.”

“Someone say my name?” Kate asks, and piles in next to Clint, though she has to push some of Bruce’s stuff out of the way to make room for her legs.

“Yeah, you guys are gonna be doing most of the work with the De Corday thing,” Carol tells her.

Kate waves her hand. “Pfft. I know my bits already. You guys are losers.”

“We’re not all super-geniuses like you,” Natasha says as she takes a seat behind Steve. “Not a lot of free time either. We’re just making room in the schedule to do this since it’s a quick thing, in and out and done. Then back to the _War Requiem_.”

“It’s pretty cool you’re gonna get to do something like that,” Carol tells Natasha. “Who do I have to bribe in order to watch you do the thing?”

Natasha laughs, and Steve carefully extricates himself from the conversation. He passes Thor and Bruce, who are now in the front pews on the other side of the aisle. They’re hunched over an oversized battered thermos, their faces wreathed in thin curls of steam.

When he gets to the lectern Tony clears out with a grin, though he doesn’t seem to look up from the current stage of whatever it is he’s playing on his mobile phone, all bright colors and cutesy faces.

Steve ignores Tony, and rolls his shoulders. “ _Labyrinthine lives lost and found and stolen_ ,” he sings, softly, so he can remember how the song begins, so he can think about pitch and instrumentation.

But mostly he thinks about the tension in the song, about how much of a dance-floor tune it is and about how complicated the lyrics are, and he thinks about its singer. Bucky Barnes, frontman and songwriter. The words of the song have a weary bite to them. The story of someone who’s lost their way. The sounds of an apathetic street corner.

Steve closes his eyes. Stands there, waiting for the right breath, waiting for the right moment -

He puts bow to strings, and begins to play. He’s in a chapel and he’s performing a song about mazes and runaways. There’s something odd about that picture, he thinks, briefly, before putting it all out of his mind. Better to lose himself in the music. He’s part of first violins and he needs to get the melody line right - well, okay, he’s thought about adding little flourishes here and there, and there’s no harm in trying them out now.

He’s halfway through the second verse when the sounds around him change.

And he’s well into the second repetition of the chorus when he starts hearing other instruments.

He doesn’t stop playing. He doesn’t break his concentration. He’s too busy channeling the song and trying to express it with his hands and his fingertips and the strings of his violin - but he does open his eyes.

To Bruce and Carol and Kate and Clint sitting in the front row, all of them playing with him. Sure, Clint is hunched over someone’s tablet, but Steve can hear him hitting snare and bass drum and cymbal, just as though he were pounding on an actual drum kit.

He leads them all to the finish, and - there’s applause.

“Who needs this band De Corday?” Thor asks, smiling widely. “It seems to me that you have just performed quite well in their place.”

“Did you get the whole thing?” Tony asks Natasha.

She’s looking at her mobile phone and nodding with what looks like satisfaction. “Yeah. I started shooting when Steve walked up to the lectern.”

“Okay, great, you should totally upload that to Youtube,” Tony says. “And that will show De Corday that we’re awesome and that they’re totally right to play with us.”

Steve blinks, and looks at Natasha’s moue of concentration and at Kate’s grin, and says, weakly, “You’re joking, right? You did shoot a video but - you’re not actually putting it online. Guys.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Kate says.

“Why would you - ”

“Steve,” Bruce says.

At that quiet and compelling voice Steve shuts up - and, belatedly, he sits down, hard, on the steps at the front of the chapel. The stone is cold, and radiates cold up his spine. Not that he’s really feeling it; he’s too busy waiting for Bruce to speak.

“Do you know what you were doing up there?”

“I was playing ‘Labyrinthine’?”

Bruce shakes his head. “Nope. You weren’t just playing. You were - ”

“You were trying to be the song,” Carol says. “And you were doing a good job of it, mind. It was a good performance. De Corday wouldn’t mind. They’ll probably like it.”

Steve feels his cheeks flame up. He may never get used to receiving compliments, especially not from these guys, who are his friends and who are the people he performs with.

Clint snorts, grins, looks away. “Okay, that’s unfair, now, you’re doing the cute thing and you’re not even doing it on purpose.”

“You’re just jealous you can’t do what he’s doing,” Kate laughs. “Because you’re not cute.”

“I am too! Ask Natasha!”

Steve doesn’t hear the rest. Too distracted. It’s likely too late to do anything if the others really did record his cover and put it online.

He’s trying to remember if the band makes a habit out of watching covers of their stuff - but right now he’s drawing a blank.

///

“Guys? I think we all need to see this,” Melinda says suddenly, looking up from her tablet and pulling out her headphones.

Bucky takes in her expression, which looks torn right down the middle between _interested_ and _concerned_. He cocks his head at her. “If it’s a Youtube thing, if it’s any kind of social media thing - remember there’s a policy? Phil’s orders?”

Phil doesn’t even look up. He’s in the shotgun seat now, and he’s been looking at his mobile phone for the last hour or so, and Bucky has no idea how he manages to avoid getting a crick in his neck when he doesn’t seem to have moved at all since he switched over. “We don’t watch covers, Melinda, you know that.”

“There’s an exception clause in that policy, and I’m invoking it,” is Melinda’s reply. “And you of all people know I wouldn’t invoke it without good reason. I know about the policy; I helped you come up with it in the first place, remember?”

“Okay, I’m interested, please let us watch this thing,” Bobbi says, though the effect is a little spoiled when her words are interrupted by hiccups, as well as the bird’s nest of her hair. “Sorry.”

“Wait,” Peggy says from the driver’s seat, “give me a moment to park this beast - there.”

Bucky looks out the window. Generic parking lot with white lines on the asphalt - some faded, some repainted (and some of those in better shape than the others, or at least more straight-looking). Headlights flash past, irregular, speeding past as though in a hurry. In contrast, they’re not actually on a schedule yet. It’s almost midnight. They’ll reach Kings in time for an early breakfast. He hopes that the diner he used to frequent is still around.

(The coffee’s okay. People tended to go there because there was hot food to be had at all hours. He has memories of heading there after some rager or another, and sitting down on the sidewalk with a bunch of other sleepy-eyed guys, waiting for the alcohol and everything else to get out of their systems. Waiting for breakfast. He’s not entirely sure he remembers the menu, however. Did it serve pancakes or breakfast burritos, before breakfast burritos became a thing?)

The van shakes as both Peggy and, eventually, Phil, pile into the seats next to Bobbi. Phil sighs, and says, “I might regret this. I might already be regretting this. But all right. Let’s watch this video of yours.”

“Not going to regret it,” Melinda says, and she fiddles with the tablet, turns the volume up all the way, holds it up at a certain angle so Bucky and the others can see it. It’s just a few hours old. She presses Play.

The first reaction is Bobbi’s - she chokes and smiles and stabs a finger at the screen, pausing the playback. “I know that place, it’s the chapel near my dorm - wow, it’s so much prettier now, what the hell else did they do to it - ”

“Explain?” Peggy asks.

“It’s not exactly a lady chapel, you know, dedicated to Mary, because it’s not part of a church. But that’s what everyone calls it. And by everyone I mean the music people, teachers, students, clubs. The acoustics are pretty damn amazing in there. You perform in there, it’s like performing in heaven. Perfect echoes. So everyone rehearsed there. Or they just went there to practice because they had time and they were lucky enough to get the place to themselves. Some afternoons we had to get in line to use the lady chapel. The religious people weren’t always amused.” She glances in Bucky’s direction. “You’ve been, right?”

He shakes his head. “Never got to sing in there, or do anything, actually. It was closed for reconstruction then.”

“Awww,” Bobbi says, and she squeezes his shoulder, and he smiles and shrugs and pats her hand in return. “Sorry for the digression,” she says next, and flaps her other hand at Melinda, who un-pauses the video.

There’s a quick pan around what looks like the front of the chapel. Three steps up to what looks like a monumental lectern in white marble.

Someone walks up to the lectern, and before Bucky can take a moment to admire the cheekbones and the determined grip on bow and violin, the young man in the video sings, softly, just one line.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky just barely notices the others looking at each other.

That voice isn’t half bad. A little too quiet for the words perhaps. Words that Bucky knows by heart. He remembers half-falling out of a rehearsal, early on in the life of De Corday. He remembers running to a table in a corner - heedless of water rings and sticky-dried beer - so he could write the entire song in the span of twenty minutes. The lyrics springing almost completely formed from his head. He’d almost named the song “Athena” to refer to its creation. The others had convinced him to rename the song.

It’s now called “Labyrinthine”.

“Okay, he’s good - ” Phil begins.

Melinda actually hisses and bares her teeth at him, and Phil raises an eyebrow at her before he subsides.

The singer in the video closes his eyes, tucks his violin into position - and he starts playing.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Peggy whispers about ten seconds later.

It’s the same melody line, except it’s not, because the violin player is adding all kinds of intricate flourishes, and the musician in Bucky has never even heard some of those flourishes.

Meaning that in this video, the violinist was noodling with the melody _on the fly_.

He glances at Melinda, who smirks at him and taps her ear. “Wait for it,” she mouths.

He does, and then the chorus hits, once and then again, and - now there are other instruments. Some kind of woodwind, he thinks, and then another violin, and is that a cello? Where are the sounds of a drum kit coming from?

The video pans down to four people in the front pews, and they’re all different kinds of hunched over, but Bucky can at least make out the shape of the other violin and the unmistakable neck of a cello.

At the end, applause, abruptly cut off.

Bucky looks around, then, though he’s reluctant to tear his eyes away from the tablet. In truth he’s waiting for more, though he knows that’s not going to happen, because the video’s flipped back to the start.

“Well, that was something,” Phil says, and he sounds mildly surprised.

“You haven’t heard the best part yet,” Melinda says.

“There’s more? Again?” Bucky mutters.

“You already know that this video was shot at Kings. Ask me who that violinist is.”

“Who?” Phil asks.

“His name is Steve Rogers. He’s currently in the chamber orchestra. As in the people we are going to be playing with. Which means it’s likely that the other performers are also part of the same group.”

“Hmm.” Now Phil sounds pleased. “Okay, I see your point. It was a good thing we saw that. At least I can breathe a little easier. Good tidings for the videos. They sounded almost as good as you guys do.”

“Are you kidding, they sounded _better_ ,” Bobbi says.

“Agreed,” Peggy says.

As much as Bucky would like to join the conversation, he’s a little bit stuck right now. White noise filling up his ears, gently falling over his thoughts, covering them over, until there’s nothing left. He’s cold and hot and back to cold all over, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling.

Blue eyes bright with determination. Bucky closes his eyes, covers his face with his hands. Steve Rogers’s eyebrows pulled together into a straight line. His shoulders, bowed beneath the music. Bucky’s music and lyrics, but turned into something else, something new. Something catastrophic.

Why is he crackling all over at the thought of playing with that guy? Why does he feel like he’s been lit up, and is that fire or lightning or both thrumming in his skin?

Dimly, he hears someone talking to him. “You’re not okay, are you.”

“No, Melinda, I’m not,” Bucky says, faintly. And: “Thank you.”

Quiet laughter. Melinda laughs like she’s tucking secrets away into her pockets. “You’re welcome.”

///

_Ring. Ring._

“Steve, wake up.”

_Ring. Ring._

“Steve.”

And Steve blinks. Snippets of songs vanish from his mind as he lifts his head up. The world spins around him - a world the size and shape of his dorm room, with the familiar cracks in the ceiling and the familiar scarred grain of his desk and the familiar groaning squeak of the chair that rocks gently from side to side as he yawns.

“Okay, good, you’re up. I was thinking I might have to kick your chair out from beneath you,” Bruce says.

Steve scrubs the sleep from his eyes, tries to look at Bruce, and - “You look like hell, _again_ ,” he says. “Why do you look like that so early in the morning?”

“Because I’ve been awake all night long, so what else is new,” is Bruce’s reply. “God, I need to sleep.”

“So why aren’t you? We kind of have a big day coming up.”

“Because your phone woke me up?”

“Ugh, sorry, dammit, I - ” And that’s when Steve finally reaches for his mobile phone, which has been in Bruce’s hand all along. “How do you even have that?”

“You left it on your pillow.” Wry, sleepy smile. “Because you’re one of those thoroughly strange people who can beat their alarm clocks.”

Steve makes a face at Bruce. “Sorry.”

“No you’re not. Please go and make your phone calls outside. You told me to go to sleep. I intend to do just that.”

“Yes, yes,” Steve says, and he pulls a jacket on. There’s a small puddle of drool on the desk. He winces and tosses a tissue at the spot and hurries out, and remembers to catch the door so that it doesn’t slam.

He’s missed a call from Professor Erskine.

Steve hits a speed-dial button, and leans back against the wall opposite the door to his dorm room, and he can’t help but grin and shake his head fondly when he hears, not the usual ringing, but a snippet of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir”.

When the music stops there’s a loud creak, and something that sounds a lot like a dog jumping around, and then: “Hello, Steve,” says Professor Erskine. A familiar voice, well-worn and well-used, reassuring sandpaper growl. “Good morning. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

“Actually you woke Bruce up,” Steve says with a quiet laugh. “Good morning, Professor.”

“I did? Ah well. What is it that you young ones say: _my bad_. I will email him something fascinating to make up for it. Now you must ask me why I am calling you.”

“If you’re trying to get me to ask _What’s up, Doc_ , I swear I’m hanging up on you.”

Rough laughter on the line, and it doesn’t exactly rumble as it does when he’s talking to his mentor in the flesh, but it does make Steve shake his head fondly. “Then I will call you again. We do have important business to discuss.”

“We do?”

“Yes, we do. You see, I remember what today is.”

Steve goes cold all over. Like being in an auditorium all over again, faces full of high school enthusiasm, and none to look his way. There’s nowhere to sit down here. He settles for sliding down to the floor.

“Don’t pass out,” the professor says, mildly, as though he were standing right next to Steve.

“Y-yeah. Okay. I won’t.” Steve locks his knees together.

“I want you to have fun, and I also want you to play very well, and so I have made a few, hmm, arrangements. Go to my office before you go to the venue that you will be playing at with that band De Corday, and open the safe in my desk.”

Steve blinks, and mentally reviews the contents of Professor Erskine’s office. The safe in question occupies the entire right-hand part of the desk where cabinets or drawers should be. The key to that safe is on his key ring, true, but he’s only ever seen the professor open and close it, and only then on special occasions.

“Steve, are you there?”

“Professor Erskine. Sir.” Steve takes a ragged breath and makes himself go on. “What exactly do you want me to do with your violin?”

“Why, play it, of course.”

“Today?”

“Yes, Steve, today. I saw your video a few days ago, and that was a fine violin you used, but today you must have something better. You’ve played my violin to great effect before. Use it when you perform with De Corday. I imagine there’ll be cameras? That the video will include you and your fellow performers?”

Again that freezing cold in his fingers and toes. Steve swallows, tries to keep up with the rest of the conversation. “Yes. That’s why we have to start a little early. Hair and makeup and - whatever.”

“Not to disparage the other instrument, then, but I insist. Use my violin. It might add a certain piquancy to the proceedings.”

“...Why?” Steve blinks, thinks it over, hurries out the next words. “I mean, why do you want me to use that violin? They’re just videos. We’ll just be covering their music.”

“They have interesting ideas,” is the calm reply. “I have taken the liberty of listening to some of their songs. At least the songwriter seems to have brushed up on his mythological references. I like that.”

“Me too.”

The next words sound like they’re wound up in a smile. “So I want you to use my violin to play the music that you like to listen to.”

Finally Steve lets him chuckle, half in relief and half in hysteria. “Seriously, Professor Erskine.”

“Seriously, Steve,” is the reply, commanding and kind all at once. “Go and get my violin. Play it well. You’ve done it before, you can do it again. Do me proud.”

“Yessir,” Steve says, and really, what else can he say? What other words are there? “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” A pause, during which there’s loud barking coming down the line, which makes Steve wince and hold the phone away from his ear for a moment. “I should be back in another week or two. Do look after yourself until then, all right?”

///

When Bucky clambers out of the cab the wind almost immediately blows his hood right off his face, and he overtips in his haste to hide his hair.

“Fuck,” he mutters, and he looks around, and he remembers the lawn in the shape of a gold bar, remembers the ivy climbing the nearest set of brick walls - but try as he might to jog his memories, he can’t quite remember the blinking neon sign right across the street: bright orange, unexpected against the slate-gray sky.

He takes a deep breath. Exhaust and fallen leaves and the distinct edge of dust before rain - and over all of that, the darkly fragrant burr of coffee being brewed.

It might be the place he remembers, though it’s not in the right place any more; or it might be something completely new. It’s popular, he can tell just from standing across the street. It’s really early, but the windows show him glimpses of people in conversation, people staring into their devices, people reading books.

Bucky squares his shoulders and pushes through the doors and feels for the Sharpie in his pocket. They’ve all learned to carry pens everywhere they go. Every day, a few more people recognize him, recognize the other members of the band. He’s not exactly looking forward to becoming, like, super famous. He’d like to walk around on the street; he’d like it very much for the others to not be harassed or stalked or worse.

He shakes his head, one hand on the back of his hood to keep it from falling away a second time, and nearly walks right into the back of the guy at the end of the coffee line.

Bucky instantly covets the guy’s slouchy, half-unraveled beanie. Some kind of honeycomb pattern in dark green. It doesn’t match the purple scarf at all.

Slowly the line inches forward. Bucky looks around, interested in spite of himself. He thinks he might be able to write a song about, or for, the two girls sitting next to the door: the concentrated rhythm of their whispered conversation. The books lying forgotten on their table are silent witnesses. What could they be talking about, he wonders, and idly he notes that one of them is wearing no jewelry except for a single golden ring on her right middle finger, while the other is literally festooned in trinkets, from her charm bracelets (she’s wearing at least two that Bucky can easily see) to the stacked rings on almost every finger.

Now the guy ahead of Bucky steps up. Bucky’s not really paying attention to him until he says, “...and I’m paying for the five people behind me, too.”

That gets the attention of the girl at the counter. “Hey, Steve, sure, we can do that. But you normally do your big coffee runs over the weekends. What’s with today?”

“This isn’t the big coffee run,” the guy says. He is apparently named Steve. Familiar name is familiar. Bucky’s listening now, and trying to do it inconspicuously. “Just - it’s a good day. You see this?”

Bucky watches from behind as Steve hefts a violin case in both hands.

The girl says, “Yeah? That’s yours, right?”

“No, it’s not, and that’s why it’s a good day. This is Professor Erskine’s violin. He lent it to me for the day.”

“No way,” the girl says. “Special occasion or something?”

“Or something,” Steve says. “I can’t really talk about it yet.”

“Wow. Professor Erskine’s violin and super secret chamber orchestra business. I could write a novel about you, Steve.”

“I’ll read it if you write it, Sharon,” Steve says with a laugh.

When Steve steps aside, placing his violin case carefully between his feet, Bucky shrugs in his direction, and ignores the part of his brain that’s niggling at him, telling him there’s something familiar about Steve. “You’re paying for my coffee, right?”

“Yep,” Steve says as he carefully cradles the dark blue cup with white stars that Sharon hands him. “You want recommendations?”

“Not really,” Bucky says, and then he turns to the girl, to Sharon. “How about you make me the weirdest drink you can think of with the ingredients you’ve currently got? As long as there’s still coffee in it, of course.”

“That sounds like a challenge,” Sharon says with a cute laugh that kind of crinkles up her nose. “I like you, stranger. But I gotta ask, how weird is weird?”

“I dunno, go nuts, surprise me,” Bucky tells her.

“You might just regret that,” Steve says, grinning as Bucky steps away from the counter. “I know for a fact there’re chili peppers in the back.”

“Oh, now you’re speaking my language,” Bucky says. “What do they go into?”

“Mexican hot chocolate.”

“Nice.”

“You have weird taste, I can’t stand the stuff,” Steve says, grinning and holding out his hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Steve.”

“I’m James,” Bucky says, and he’s not actually lying, because that really is the name on his birth certificate. “Nice to meet you.”

“Here you go - James,” Sharon says after a few minutes.

The drink she hands him is mostly green, and it smells like spicy espresso, and there’s a thin layer of cream floating on top. “Dear god what is this,” Bucky says, and before anyone can answer him he takes a deep breath and a very cautious sip.

It tastes like green tea and espresso and the unholy offspring of several of those drinks with black pearls in them, and he tells Sharon so, to Steve slowly turning red as he snickers - so the next thing Bucky does is thrust the cold cup in his direction. “You can laugh some more after you try it.”

“Nope,” Steve says, holding up his hands.

“I insist.”

On Sharon, the whole nose-crinkling thing had looked cute. When Steve does it, however, Bucky gives in to temptation and snaps a quick phone-cam photo of him.

(Where has Bucky seen those blue eyes before?)

“Hey,” Steve says, but he’s laughing and taking the cup, and he looks like someone’s about to drop him in a freezing river, but he swallows and gulps at the drink, and Bucky takes another picture of him when he coughs and covers his mouth and makes several disgusted sounds.

Sharon, behind the counter, is giggling even as she serves the next few customers.

Bucky thinks he might write a short song about Steve and weird-shit coffee-shop drinks, something like a joke but not the sharp-edged kind, because he really kind of finds Steve’s crow’s-feet attractive, to say nothing of the calluses on his hands when Bucky takes the green drink back.

“Chamber orchestra, you said,” Bucky says, motioning Steve to a table.

Steve looks at his watch, and sighs, shakes his head. “Okay, maybe a few more minutes, and then I gotta go and find my friends. But yeah. Chamber orchestra.”

“Important gig today?”

A small smile. A shrug. “Dunno how you define important. Just a gig. Like I told Sharon, I can’t really talk about it.”

“Shame,” Bucky says, and why is smiling so easy? Why does he want Steve to smile?

Next thing he knows, Steve has his phone out, and it’s pointed in his direction, and before Bucky can fling up a hand to cover his face Steve is nodding and squinting at his phone. “You took a couple of pictures of me, I take a picture of you. Fair’s fair.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d, um, not put that online?” Bucky asks. He has to ask. It’s worth a shot.

Steve blinks, and smiles, and ducks his head. “Are you someone famous? Because if you are, you should know, I don’t do social media. At all. Not my thing.”

“Seriously?” Bucky asks.

“Seriously.” Steve’s face goes red again. “Your secret, if you’ve got a secret, is safe with me. Mostly. Sometimes my friends steal my phone. I won’t let them do that today. All right?”

Bucky doesn’t even bother to hide his sigh of profound relief. “Thanks. I mean it, Steve. Really. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Steve gets up, holding on carefully to his violin case.

Bucky follows his lead, and it’s strangely easy to fall into step with him, until they’re out on the street.

“Gotta go,” Steve says, thumping Bucky on the shoulder. “Can I ask you a really rude question, though?”

“Yeah, sure, shoot,” Bucky says, raising an eyebrow at him. “What kind of rude question?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you look like someone famous? Famous as in lead singer of a band famous?”

Bucky bites back several possible responses and settles for shaking his head and grinning as recklessly as he possibly can.

“Yeah, I figured - sorry, I did say it was a rude question. Thanks for the company,” and Steve turns around, starts jogging off down the street. The wind makes the ends of his ridiculous purple scarf flap around behind him.

“Thanks for the coffee!” Bucky hollers after him.

“That wasn’t coffee, but you’re welcome!”

Bucky grins, and the world is suddenly a little warmer, and he manages to whistle, very very quietly, as he puts his hands in his pockets and walks off in the general direction of the music halls.

///

“Hi Steve take a seat I’ll work on you after I’m done with Bruce,” Darcy says the moment Steve steps through the doors. Tiles beneath his feet, vines and elaborate trellises, yellow and red roses entwined.

He’s seen Stephen Hall full of people, but then again, he’s used to it as a venue for an intimate concert, or a very small recital.

Today the chairs are arranged into three straggling rows in the corner, and there are cables everywhere and more microphone stands than he can count, and that’s still without mentioning the three cameras or the profusion of klieg lights.

Over all of the confusion soars the high vaulted ceiling and the row of windows. Rose-colored glass panes. Steve is standing in a pool of pink light.

“Yeah, this isn’t Stephen Hall,” Clint drawls as he steps up to Steve’s side. “Looks more like a madhouse to me.”

“All this just for - whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing today?” Steve winces when he hears his own voice - he sounds bewildered, and he shouldn’t be, and he also sounds afraid, which he _cannot_ be today.

“Pretty much. Not my kind of scene, you know? But hey. They want one more person to bang on things. Big booming sounds. That’s a thing I do. So I’m here.” Quiet crunching sounds. “I got popcorn. Want?”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve says, and he reaches into the plastic tub in the crook of Clint’s arm. “Brown popcorn?”

“Chocolate and salted caramel, and there might be some pretzels in there, I didn’t check.”

“How is it your teeth haven’t all rotted and fallen out? When you’re not eating sugary things you’re drinking them.”

“See, you’re better when you’re snarking,” Clint says with a grin. “And for your information, I floss.”

Steve shakes his head and follows him deeper into the hall, and he lets Darcy not-quite-manhandle him into a chair, and he makes sure that Dr Erskine’s violin is safely situated nearby before he can focus on fighting off - what exactly? He’s going to be performing with De Corday. He’s going to be performing with Dr Erskine’s violin. He’s going to be leading one group of performers and their performance will be recorded on camera.

He can ignore the shaking from his morning coffee, but he can’t ignore the shaking in his very nerves.

“Are you gonna hyperventilate?” Darcy asks. How she manages to hold on to the four-five-six brushes in her hand he doesn’t know. “I don’t want you to hyperventilate. I thought you’d need help, so, here,” she says, dropping something soft into his lap.

“Thanks?” Steve says.

But the soft object that he picks up is - a teddy bear. Felt, not plush, and he can see the stitches holding it together, neat and fine and meticulous. Darcy must have very steady hands. Oversized head, small ears with the tips tacked down. Soft paws.

And it’s not just a teddy bear - it’s a teddy bear that’s been dressed up. Domino mask over the eyes - Steve lifts one corner of the mask and wide black eyes stare back at him. A triangular patch of a nose, and stitched lines leading from it to form a mouth much like a cat’s, or the numeral 3 turned onto its side. Faux-leather black jacket with lots of shiny little zippers and a row of silver buttons down the front. The tacked-down ears are decorated with a profusion of bits of shiny metal.

“That’s Melinda Bear,” Darcy says as she taps a fan-shaped brush over Bruce’s cheekbones. “Or at least, the version of her I’m satisfied with. Took me three weeks to finish. I can do design, and I can do the sewing, but sometimes what you create doesn’t really look like what you dream of, so you gotta start over. I hate false starts.”

“Melinda Bear,” Steve replies. “She’s - cute. You made her?”

“Yeah, and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy to get the material for her jacket. Can you guess why she’s Melinda Bear?”

Steve looks at the bear, looks out at the rest of the hall, looks back at Darcy. “Melinda Bear, as in Melinda May, De Corday’s drummer?” He pokes at the ears, and he realizes that the bits of metal are supposed to look like the real Melinda’s piercings.

Wide, brilliant grin. “Penny for the smart man. Okay, Bruce, off you go, you’re done, easy as breathing. You’re lucky you’re pretty,” Darcy laughs.

“Pretty, me?” Bruce says, chuckling, and he hovers at Steve’s shoulder. “You all right? I was wondering where you’d run off to. I got here before you did.”

“Had to be lent a violin.” Steve obediently closes his eyes when Darcy taps his forehead.

“This one?” Bruce asks.

Steve smiles in spite of himself when he hears the clasps click open, and he waits for Bruce’s reaction, and it’s actually rather satisfying: “Holy _shit_ , I know what this is!”

A new voice. Steve blinks, opens his eyes, raises his hands to placate Darcy when he moves and she pouts at him in response. “Hey, Bruce,” Carol says. “And - holy fucking hell, is that the professor’s violin, _what is it doing here?_ ”

“It’s here because I brought it here,” Steve says.

“Settle down, dammit, you want this done quickly, you gotta let me work,” Darcy says, looking like she’s about to stomp her foot.

“Okay, okay, can I talk while you do - whatever it is you’re doing?”

“Yeah, I guess you can, I can’t stop you.”

A presence at his elbow. “Steve.” It’s Carol. “Steve, what the hell? Professor Erskine’s violin? You brought it here _why_?”

“Because he lent it to me for the day. He wants me to use it,” Steve says.

“Wow,” Bruce says, and then whispers a few more obscenities under his breath. “You’re gonna sound pretty damn good. You’re gonna make us all sound so good.”

Again that cold feeling, nailed into Steve’s feet. He huddles into his scarf.

“Shut up, Bruce,” Carol says, though she sounds fond. “He isn’t gonna sound all that good if you give him performance anxiety or shit like that.”

“But - _that violin_ ,” Bruce says, and then there’s a sound of footsteps walking away, and a sound of footsteps coming closer.

“All done, Steve, you can go,” Darcy says, and Steve blinks and opens his eyes and hops out of the chair with some alacrity.

He can’t get far, though, because he’s still holding on to the Melinda Bear and someone is holding its other paw: Natasha, who looks concerned in that sharp, shrewd way of hers that sometimes makes Steve blush.

“You okay, Steve?”

“Yeah.” He nods. He gives her the Melinda Bear, and he goes to retrieve the violin that has been entrusted to him, and he smiles and shuts it back into its case.

“Just you, Nat?” Darcy asks. She’s holding a selection of colored plastic tubes in her hands, some in black and some in gold and some in silver. “Pick one, I’m not picking one for you, I at least have some brains in my head.”

Carol snickers and takes one of the silver tubes. “This one would look good on me, except, clarinet,” she says.

“But aren’t you using your own reeds? So what’s the holdup? They’re your stuff, which means you should totally wear lipstick,” Darcy says.

Steve watches Natasha select one of the black tubes and then borrow a mirror from Darcy. The lipstick goes on a deep bluish-red, vibrant against her freckles and neatly pinned hair. “Just me and Thor and Tony.”

“Because the three of you plus the four of them make a choir, yeah, I get that,” Carol says, nodding, before she turns to Steve. “And then there’s you and your super special violin. I’m not sure Bruce has recovered yet. We’ll have to have someone look after him, make sure he’s not too distracted to play.”

“Super special violin?” Natasha asks as she hands the lipstick back to Darcy.

“Professor Erskine’s violin,” Carol says. And then she turns back to Steve and pats him affectionately on the shoulder. “No pressure, Steve, I’m just - you do like that violin. And you’re good at it. You’ve played it before. So you’re gonna kill us today. I know you will.”

He can feel himself blushing. Heat melting away the tides of ice in his veins.

“I don’t suppose you could pretend we weren’t here,” Natasha says, smiling kindly. “Like in the video. You played like there was no one else there with you.”

“I appreciate that, I really do, and I’ll do my best.” Steve clasps her shoulder and then Carol’s. “Although that might be hard to do considering there’ll be a director and people yelling at us today.”

“If they start yelling at you, Steve, we’ll kick their asses,” Darcy says, hooking her arms around the others’ waists.

“Whose asses need kicking?” Tony asks when he steps into the huddle, and Darcy rolls her eyes and pretends to stomp on his foot, and Thor is trying to fit into the chair next to Darcy’s things, and it’s chaos - and Steve makes good his escape with the violin.

He retreats into the corner where the refreshments have been set up. A bowl full of lollipops in clear plastic wrappers stands next to a jar of jelly beans. After a moment of staring, it hits him that the jelly beans come in the band’s colors: dark red and yellow. Someone is setting up a coffee and tea station, and Steve pastes on a smile and asks for a cup of tea.

The paper cup is just big enough for him to fit his hands around, and he sits in another corner and watches as a group of people in black t-shirts comes in and starts setting up. Familiar instruments for the most part, except for the timpani-and-tom-tom assortment that gets parked right in front of the three rows of chairs. Two keyboards are unpacked, and a mic stand and a small amp are set up between the further keyboard and the percussion group.

A woman comes in with a clipboard in one hand and a tablet in the other, and she says, “Hello, I’m Julia Carpenter, and I’ll be directing the shoot - I’d like to speak to the singers and to the chamber orchestra, please?”

That means him. Steve hurries over, juggling paper cup and violin case, and squeezes in next to Natasha and Bruce.

“You have been briefed about the songs we’re playing today, I hope,” Carpenter says. “I know you were given a set list of five songs, but the band and I have talked things over, and there’s been a change of plans. We’re going to concentrate on ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ and ‘Run and Howl’. That way we have a little time to experiment, a little time to play around, and if we’re lucky we’ll have the chance to make some really good videos.”

On Steve’s left, the singers are nodding as they mutter among themselves, and he thinks he understands why, because apparently the band is taking them into consideration. There is a very beautiful and very startling high note about halfway into “Run and Howl”, and he’s heard Natasha attempt it. Or perhaps “attempt” isn’t the right word because she’d simply reached it - and then held it for twice as long as it was supposed to be sounded.

“That’s really clever,” Carol mutters from Bruce’s other side, before raising her voice. “Um, Miz Carpenter?”

The woman looks up from her tablet. “Yes, Miss - ah - ”

“Danvers, Carol Danvers, I play the clarinet. The sheets for ‘Scylla’ don’t really say anything about anyone getting to do a solo. Is it possible to have one?”

Carpenter looks like she’s thinking about it. “Instrumental solo, I’m guessing, since there’s a vocal solo in ‘Run and Howl’. Okay. I’m listening. Who’d you have in mind to play on ‘Scylla’?”

“Steve,” Clint says around the lollipop in his mouth. “Steve of course. He’s head of first violins. And he knows the song already. He taught it to the rest of us.”

Steve sighs, and shakes his head, and he really wants to put his face in his hands, except that he’s still holding on to a couple of things, so he just tries to kick Clint in the shins.

“Sorry, sorry, I should have gotten here earlier, just late, class ran ten minutes over,” Kate says as she hurries in. “Hi, Julia.”

“Oh, Kate, hi!”

Carol blinks at Kate. “You - know each other?”

“Yeah, we went to school together, and Julia was a few years ahead of me,” Kate says. “What’re we talking about now?”

“Putting a solo into ‘Scylla and Charybdis’, and your orchestra has just nominated someone named Steve,” Julia says. “So, good idea or bad idea?”

“Not my orchestra, Julia. But that is absolutely a good idea!” Kate says, and she puts her cello down and grabs Steve’s wrist and pulls him forward.

He can feel all their eyes on him, even the people who’d been setting up De Corday’s instruments, even the people at the refreshments table.

There’s nothing else he can do.

“That’s not _your_ violin,” Kate begins, when Steve straightens up and tucks the instrument into position.

Steve smiles thinly, shakes his head.

He thinks of Professor Erskine’s collection of monographs on Vivaldi, and it’s not at all the right season but he shakes out his free shoulder, touches bow to strings - and he begins to play. He’s somewhere in the second movement of “Spring” from _The Four Seasons_ , sprightly and gently meandering. A dozen measures, just enough to fill the hall with beautiful music, just enough to fill his head with a sweetly lingering melody.

He doesn’t realize that he closes his eyes until he has to blink and then Carol’s next to him, empty-handed, just for support. “Count me in, please,” he says.

He gets a bright grin in response. “Yep, I was waiting for you to ask. Ready? One, two, one-two-three- _four_ \- ”

And Steve _yanks_ the bow across the strings, one powerfully discordant chord after another, menacing echoes in his ears as he charges straight into the first verse of “Scylla and Charybdis”.

He can feel his fingers moving up and down the strings, and he can feel the weight of the bow in his hand. The music claws its way out of him, and he throws it out to the four corners of the hall, like predator birds shrieking melodically, fighting above roaring waves. Shoals on one side and a whirlpool on the other.

The song is supposed to end abruptly, but Steve can’t resist putting a cadenza in, and he quickly improvises a brief section based on the first chorus, and at the end he snaps his arm straight up into the air. Echoes crashing in on him from the walls, almost enough to drown out his breathing.

Applause.

Steve blinks, and Carol and Kate are jumping up and down with their arms around each other, and Bruce still has his phone up, and Clint is flashing thumbs-up signs. Tony and Thor and Natasha are grinning. None of them are clapping their hands, so -

He turns around.

Five people in the doorway to the hall, looking appreciative. A man in a suit jacket in the front, surrounded by three women and -

And -

“James?” Steve asks, and that’s where things get a little strange.

///

“Welcome to Stephen Hall,” Bobbi says, grinning mischievously at the others. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

“Surely you exaggerate,” Peggy says, and Bucky watches her pretend to throw her phone at Bobbi, smiling fondly all the while.

Melinda and Phil are looking around attentively as they walk down the stairs, trailed by people carrying bags and makeup kits and Bucky’s not really sure what else. He doesn’t want to know, not really. He might well be subjected to whatever weird things they’re toting around in a few moments anyway.

This part, at least, Bucky can remember rather vividly. If you wanted to get into the performance space, you had to go up six steps to reach the doors, and then down a flight of stairs. Not something that made a lot of sense until you looked up and considered the ceiling and all that space to throw voices and instrumentals towards.

And it sounds like that’s exactly what’s happening right now, and he steps to the closed doors and listens very carefully for a moment, until he figures out where in the song the performer is and starts humming along.

“Is that - is that _our_ song?” Melinda asks. “Is that actually ‘Scylla and Charybdis’?”

“It sounds very much like it.” Peggy shakes her head, slowly, from side to side. “Only it sounds like it’s been spindled and mutilated and stomped on, and I mean all of that in a good way. _Who_ is playing?”

“One person or more?” Bobbi asks.

Bucky presses his ear against the door. Vibrations running through him, echoing, powerful. “One. It sounds like just the one. Wow.”

Phil smiles, and says, “Let’s find out who it is.” The doors don’t squeak when he carefully, deliberately pulls them open.

A cluster of people. Wide eyes, shocked expressions, one or two admiring grins. Black outfits, bright red lipstick, a fascinating assortment of musical instruments placed here and there on and around the ranged chairs.

The band’s own instruments are there, too, all trailing various wires and cables, except for Bobbi’s bass guitar, still in its battered case, which she is holding on to. Sunlight pours in through the stained glass in the windows and throws a cloak of colors onto the shoulders of the person who is playing the violin with such vehement power.

And Bucky has definitely, definitely seen that purple scarf before. Just this morning, in fact. Just a few hours ago.

The violinist - _Steve_ \- rampages through the last few lines of the song and then -

“That’s not something you ever wrote,” Bobbi whispers urgently as Steve keeps going, sounding breathless and bowled over. “We were there when you wrote that song. We were all there together, jamming, and you wrote that song, and Bucky? You never wrote that part.”

“And we never invented that,” Melinda adds.

Steve sounds like he’s improvising his way through one of the choruses, and he’s going faster and faster and Bucky’s breathless with just trying to watch him and listen to the music he’s creating at the same time, and then Steve ramps it up even more -

“ _Fuck,_ ” someone says. The voice sounds a lot like Phil’s.

The music smashes to a stop. Echoes still wailing quietly in the corridor, in the air of the hall, and now Steve is standing with his bow pointing straight up, like a challenge to the sky, like a conquering hero out of the great epics that Bucky loves for all that they’re such flawed stories -

Applause, then: the others are clapping and hollering, and Bucky watches as Steve looks around, before turning slowly on his heel.

Their eyes meet. Bucky pushes his hood back, and smiles, and watches as recognition flares up in Steve’s eyes.

“James?”

“Steve,” Bucky says, and he steps forward, leads the others into the hall.

“Guys!” Julia says, all lit up and all but bouncing on her feet. “Great to have you here! We need to talk about the ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ thing - ”

“Can’t we just, I don’t know, stay in the background while _he_ \- ” and here Bobbi points to Steve, “ - does his thing?”

“I really wish we could,” Phil says, and then he’s striding over to Steve, and Bucky smiles and sort of shrugs at Steve, before heading to his keyboard. He runs his hands over the keys, silent for now, but he only has to turn it on to remedy that.

One chord, quiet, ringing, for his ears alone.

He turns around, takes a long critical look at the cables and the speaker positioned several feet behind where he’s supposed to stand, before turning back to the keyboard. Settings, levels, presets.

Movement, close by, and he recognizes the bracelet that moves toward him, and he unthinkingly closes the distance between him and Melinda. “I may have to explain this to you?” he starts.

“Pretty sure I can already guess most of it,” she says. “Just, tell me, are you okay, because the sheer coincidence of this - you told us about him just five minutes ago, and now this.”

“Watch a cover video someone else shot of him, actually have a conversation with him, and then this. Yes. Insane. Don’t know about the coincidence.” Bucky grins, and adds, “He _did_ ask me if I knew I looked like someone famous.”

She barks out a short, sharp laugh. “What’d you tell him?”

“I didn’t say anything!” Bucky says, grinning some more when that makes her laugh some more, loudly enough that the sound bounces crazily and beautifully around them, and the next thing he knows, someone else is crowding in on his other side.

“Share the joke,” Peggy says.

“Coincidences, and Bucky telling people that yes, he does look like someone famous,” Melinda tells her.

Peggy raises a perfectly penciled eyebrow and tilts her head a little. “Maybe from a certain angle you look like, I don’t know, perhaps one of those actors you never watch? Nicolas Cage?”

“ _I don’t look like Nicolas Cage how dare you_ ,” Bucky says, and he’s never been more offended in his life, and then he can’t hold his poker face any more, and he laughs and so do the other two, and finally Phil walks over and folds his arms and he’s looking at them like he’s put-upon.

“Do I want to know why?” Phil asks.

“Nope,” Melinda says.

“Good, because I heard ‘Nicolas Cage’ and I am highly disturbed. Now, to business,” and how Phil manages to keep his poker face Bucky can’t imagine, because he and Peggy are trying very hard not to fall down laughing. “Julia wants to interpolate that cadenza from the violinist at the end of ‘Scylla’, and that means we’re shooting that first, while he can still remember it or while he’s still got the energy to improvise. I must ask you to maintain your professional demeanor at all times while the camera is rolling. Bucky, can you do that?”

“Yeah, I think I can, and I think the violinist - his name is Steve - can do that too.”

“Okay, didn’t you just mention someone with the exact name, should I be asking questions about that?”

“Not now,” Bucky says.

“Do you want a few moments to talk to him? The camera people need to set up and we’ll want you in position for focusing and angles, but not exactly right now. You’ve got, I don’t know,” and Phil glances at his watch. “I can give you fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. You might want to make that count.”

“Hi guys,” Bobbi says at that moment, and she’s leading someone dressed in black over. Dark hair tucked under an intricate hat that looks like lace and feathers, and terribly fashionable black-framed glasses, and a wide star-struck grin. “I’ve just been introduced to someone who’s kind of made a thing. A really cool thing. This is Darcy. She volunteers with the chamber orchestra.”

“I’m the gofer,” the girl, Darcy, says, wiggling her fingers. “And I had a little time on my hands and I didn’t know you were coming until last week or something like that, but it was a good thing I’d already completed this. Could you maybe autograph my bear?”

She holds something out to them. Little black leather jacket. Domino mask. Round ears decorated with bits of silver -

“That’s me,” Melinda suddenly says. “You’ve got the earrings right.”

“That is.” Peggy smiles, reaches out to touch the bear on its forehead. “You’ve made a Melinda Bear.”

“Yeah,” Darcy says. “Yeah I did.”

“Isn’t this just _awesome_ ,” Bobbi crows. “And that’s not the best part.”

Darcy beams. “I could - maybe make - more bears? Peggy Bear, and Bobbi Bear, and Bucky Bear - ”

“And Phil Bear,” Melinda says as she takes the bear from Darcy with reverent hands. “You can’t make bears of us and leave out a Phil Bear. With a little suit and everything.”

Bucky watches her turn the bear over, careful and admiring.

And he steps back from the others, sweeps the hall with a comprehensive glance, and it only takes him a moment to zero in on broad, expressive shoulders and much-ruffled hair. Steve has apparently taken off his hat, and Bucky wonders who made him take it off, although he now can’t decide whether he prefers Steve with the hat or Steve without.

Bucky dodges around technicians and camera people and the occasional klieg light, and he takes a lollipop from the refreshments table before weaving his way towards Steve.

Who turns around when Bucky taps him firmly on the shoulder. Expressions flicker across his face: surprise, and then a smile that’s equal parts amused and abashed. Bright depths in his eyes that make Bucky think of arc lightning in a night sky.

“You really should have gone further,” Bucky says with his own best self-deprecating grin, “with those rude questions of yours.”

“I asked you if you knew that you looked like someone famous,” Steve says, laughing and shaking his head. His grin is wreathed in the steam that drifts up from the cup in his hand. “You actually told me the truth. You _do_ look like someone famous. Someone as famous as _Bucky Barnes_.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard about him. People tell me he’s kinda weird. Used to sleep on the streets. And he can sing.”

Is Steve blushing? And why does Bucky want to _feel_ that blush under a fingertip? “Do we have to do the introductions thing? I mean, I know who you are now.”

Bucky smiles, shrugs, one-shouldered. “And I know you’re a nice guy who also happens to know how to rock out _hard_ on a violin.”

Steve laughs softly. And, against all odds, offers his hand again, as though this were the coffee shop again. “I do that. Sometimes. I think. Steve Rogers.”

“James Barnes. People call me Bucky,” Bucky says as he shakes Steve’s hand for the second time. And now that he’s seen Steve play the violin, he can better appreciate the strange lines and shapes of his hand.

“Can I ask you _why_ ‘Bucky’? Seems a long way away from your name. Only if you want to, of course,” Steve adds, hastily. Again that slight red flush high in his cheeks. A closed-lipped smile, and the scuff of his shoes against the beautiful tiles.

“Yeah, sure, why not,” Bucky says, before he leans in and winks conspiratorially. “But you gotta promise not to tell anyone.”

Steve nods. His hand moves, and Bucky aches to catch it, one way or another. “Promise.”

“Stupid middle name,” Bucky says, chuckling to himself. “I was apparently named for one of the presidents. First name James, last name begins with ‘Buch’ and ends with ‘anan’.”

He watches as Steve gets it, and makes a face that seems sympathetic. “I - can see why you might have had problems. So - ‘Bucky’, then.”

“Yep.”

Steve nods.

Silence falls, but it’s not entirely awkward - at least, not to Bucky. It feels natural. He doesn’t feel compelled to fill in the gaps with words. Words can be strange, anyway, and part of his problem as a writer is the difficulty of finding just the right word for a lyric, for an interview, for an autograph.

But that comfortable silence is broken when someone calls out to him from across the hall: “Mr Barnes, they need you at your keyboard - ”

Bucky sighs, and shakes his head, a little amused and a little dismayed. “It never lasts for very long, does it,” he asks no one in particular. “You take five, and five’s not enough. You couldn’t even finish a cigarette in five - I mean you could, but where’s the joy in that?”

Steve tips his head a little to the side. “You smoke?”

“You have objections?”

“Only if you smoke menthols, because Clint does when he bothers to, and they stink.”

“Your friend has no taste,” Bucky tells him. “Is he here?”

Steve nods. “Yeah. He’s over there.” Bucky follows his pointing arm to the scruffy blond at the second set of percussion instruments. His sleeves aren’t quite long enough to hide the support tape wrapped around his wrist, startlingly bright purple.

“Mr Barnes!” that voice calls again.

“Okay,” Bucky calls, and turns back to Steve, feeling sheepish. “I really gotta beat it.”

“And I should be getting back to the others,” Steve says.

“You didn’t even have time to finish your tea. Or start on it.”

“This?” Steve wrinkles his nose, and then, to Bucky’s surprise, holds the paper cup out. “I’m - not a fan of tea. But I got this because I needed to keep my hands warm, and if I got another coffee I’d be compelled to drink it. Do you want it?”

Bucky gestures, helplessly, to Steve’s hands. “Gloves?”

“I have some, but I can’t wear them when I’m playing, and I certainly couldn’t wear them because - video,” and Steve’s own gesture encompasses the bustle in the hall.

“Dammit. I’m not thinking at all. Stupid questions.”

“Not stupid at all,” Steve murmurs.

“Listen, I almost forgot, I came over to tell you that you were awesome, and - you’re gonna get to do it again and it’ll be cool,” Bucky says, and he may stumble over the words but at least he’s able to get them all out, and it’s worth it because Steve blushes, red creeping below the collar of his shirt.

“There,” Bucky says, and pulls out his punch line with a grin: “Not so cold anymore, are you?”

And then he really has to run, and submit himself to hair and makeup and getting fussed over by the guys working on the lights, but no one stops him from watching Steve cross back to the chairs.

Something small and wearing a leather jacket lands on his keyboard, then, and he looks up to Melinda’s grin. “I hope you’re not too distracted to sign the poor bear, you kind of ran off on us,” she snarks.

Bucky snorts and grabs the silver pen in her other hand. He turns the bear over, and grins, because Peggy’s signature is small and neat and easy to read and Bobbi’s has lots of tall loops, and one of the bear’s sleeves has been signed by Phil. So he follows suit and signs the bear’s other sleeve: _Keep Being Awesome – BuckyB._

///

Julia Carpenter’s standing at the far end of the hall, but Steve can hear her just fine as she orders everyone to their positions: “Okay, people, let’s focus, ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ time. We’re gonna film you guys but no pressure, okay? This is just all of us noodling around and getting used to each other. Just a warm-up take. If it’s any good we’ll use it; if something happens and we don’t like it, we’ll go to take one. So everyone relax. Don’t be too surprised if someone sticks a camera in your face.”

Next to him, Bruce laughs softly, and Steve nudges him carefully, and tries to be reassuring. “Come on, Bruce, you heard the lady, we’re just going to play a couple of songs. We can screw up. They’ll edit it out or something if we do.”

“I’m not laughing because I’m nervous, Steve, where’ve you been? We’ve done live shit, we’ve performed in front of heads of state, we’re kind of veterans now. I’m laughing because _you’re_ nervous.”

“I’m not - ”

“You are,” Kate says, leaning in and grinning as she taps Steve’s bow with her own. “You’re _shaking_. O fearless leader, what have they done to you?”

“You mean like what has _he_ done to Steve,” Bruce snickers.

“You can practically see the hearts in Steve’s eyes - ”

He nearly gets up to smack them on the backs of their heads, but just then Carpenter raises her hands in fists, fingers coming up in exact mirror images of each other: little fingers, ring fingers, middle fingers, and then she yells, “Action!”

The first notes from the keyboards fill up Stephen Hall, ominous, like a dirge getting louder and louder, and Steve hears Carol take a deep breath and he knows exactly what she’s going to do - they’ve done this before - and as she begins to play her clarinet the drums start up, Melinda May and Clint Barton leaping headlong into the fray -

Bass, Bobbi Morse’s hands moving confidently over her own set of strings, and that’s their cue - Steve glances at Bruce, who nods, and they start playing, shivering counterpoint against Bucky Barnes as he starts growling out his lyrics, and everyone else crashes in after them.

Three more voices rising in song - De Corday, harmonizing - joined by Thor, and then Tony, and last of all Natasha - and Steve only has a moment to catch the utter shock on Julia Carpenter and Phil Coulson’s faces before all hell breaks loose.

The song’s like lightning and thunder, searing Steve and shattering him in turn.

He has to grit his teeth and keep going, and all the while his heart’s beating like it’s about to shatter, like it’s about to fly away, borne on black-brazen wings.

And then it’s time for the cadenza: Steve holds on to that image of dark wings in flight, the enraged cry of a tortured old soul, thrashing itself free of brittle and rotted chains -

He’s one with the violin in his hands, one with the terrible screaming strings -

One long last shrieking note -

And silence, and the sound of his own labored breathing.

Steve can see Julia Carpenter’s mouth moving, and then the woman herself is in motion: running, crossing the hall, and she’s stopping right in front of him and saying, “Good god, I need to shake your hand!”

His bow is taken gently from him. Carol tosses him a wink.

And then Julia Carpenter _does_ wring his hand, just for a moment, and as she pulls away he can see that she’s speaking but he can’t quite make out the words.

What he does understand is this, tossed carelessly over her shoulder as she heads back to where she had been standing at the beginning of the performance: “I want one of the cameras on him at all times.”

And he blinks, and he opens his mouth to object, and he’s not the only one reacting, because Phil Coulson walks over to the over-excited director and meets her halfway, and he’s shortly joined by Melinda May.

Steve carefully puts the violin down. He extricates himself from the chairs and follows, and he doesn’t really notice that they all stop almost exactly between Peggy Carter’s keyboard and Bucky’s. Footsteps behind him; he’s expecting Carol or Bruce, but it’s neither of them: it’s Thor, and the first thing that comes out of Steve’s mouth is “Um.”

Thor smiles and nods and folds both hands contemplatively behind his back. “I know what you’re about to do - you wish to speak to the director - and so I also wish to speak to her. Maybe the others will join us; maybe not.”

“ - and I believe that Mr Rogers might have some words for you,” Phil Coulson is saying.

Steve blinks again, and squares his shoulders. “Hello, Miss Carpenter - ”

“Please, call me Julia - ”

“Miss Julia,” Steve says, for courtesy’s sake. “I’d - I’d really prefer it if you didn’t point a camera at me.”

“But why not? You’re more than good at that violin thing you do.”

“This isn’t my video. It’s De Corday’s. We’re the people playing with the band. We’re not the stars of the show.”

Someone murmurs, and Steve has no idea whether they approve or not.

Thor steps forward. “May I be allowed to say a few words?”

“This is Thor Odinson,” Steve says.

“Go ahead, Mr Odinson,” Phil Coulson says.

Thor nods at him, then focuses on Julia Carpenter. “I have been performing with my colleagues Ms Romanova and Mr Stark for a few years now, and there have been occasions on which cameras have attempted to single us out when we are in truth singing as a group, as a set of joined voices - and I am of the opinion that such attempts are ultimately futile. It is clear that we work together, that we sing together, even when one of us must sing a solo, for that single voice is supported and joined and bolstered by the others. Harmony cannot arise from a monotone, after all. I believe that the same is true for the chamber orchestra in this case. And, perhaps, for the band, in certain passages. So I would kindly ask you to refrain from training a camera solely upon one performer or another. In the end, the chorus and the chamber orchestra work precisely because of the many working as one.”

“Nicely said,” Melinda May murmurs, nodding. “Some of that even sounded like a song.”

Thor beams and offers Melinda his hand, and Steve can’t help but smile as they shake on it.

“If we put this to a vote, you’ll lose by a landslide,” Phil Coulson tells Julia Carpenter. “Let’s stick with what we’ve already got, and move on. We’re losing daylight with each moment we spend standing here. Unless you’re satisfied with that initial take?”

Julia Carpenter sighs, shrugs, offers up a lopsided smile. “Okay, okay, I know I’m outgunned, and - well. You’ve already discovered your shooting star, Coulson, you’ll forgive me for looking out for mine.”

Steve raises an eyebrow when Phil Coulson frowns and shakes his head. But all he says is, “Let’s have everybody take fifteen minutes and then we’ll take it from the top, and maybe we can actually get to ‘Run and Howl’ before dinner.”

Steve watches Melinda motion Peggy over, watches them put their arms around each other’s waists, until Peggy says, “Yes, I’m assuming there’s a reason why you wanted to talk to me?”

“No, I just wanted someone to lean on,” Melinda says, throwing a wink at Thor.

So Thor chuckles and goes over to stand next to Melinda. “You may lean upon me, if you wish, on one condition.”

“Which is?” Peggy asks.

“That you will permit me to take a photograph of myself with the two of you. Jane - she’s in the astrophysics department - is a very enthusiastic fan of yours. I would have invited her to observe this shoot but she has to prepare for a conference.”

“Oh, well, then, that settles it, we’ll take a picture and you’ll tell her that we wish her all the luck,” Peggy says with a bright grin.

“Join us, Steve,” Thor says.

Steve shakes his head and holds his hand out. “Nope. I’ll make myself useful. Give me your phone.”

“My thanks.”

Steve can’t help but smile as Peggy moves to stand on Thor’s other side, so that she and Melinda are flanking him and waving at the camera, and he frames the shot and gives them a thumbs-up when everything’s done.

After, he lets Bruce and Clint pass him by as they hurry out, and he goes and sits down in his seat, and he turns back to the solace of a handful of notes, though he does make sure to push the microphones out of the way. More of _The Four Seasons_ , though this time he decides he’d rather riff off the familiar melody of “Autumn”.

A thrill in his fingers when he reverently starts plucking at the strings. Keys in one hand, soft notes in the other. Professor Erskine’s violin isn’t anywhere near as old as any of the named violins held in museums and loaned out to master performers, but Steve would back it against any and all comers anyway. A unique voice, completely submitting to the control of the person playing it, with an elegant power that could never be restrained.

From Vivaldi to the Foo Fighters. Steve glances at his phone. He has time. He can get through “Everlong” in five minutes.

Why not? Besides, it’s not like the professor doesn’t do the same thing. Steve has caught him trying to play the Beach Boys on this exact same instrument. “Kokomo”, of all the things, and a dead-serious attempt at the trilling steelpans, and that is probably the reason why no one wants to believe the story, because all they see is this violin singing out the great symphonies and concertos. Which is a shame, because he’s holding on to an instrument with so many beautiful voices, including the right set of voices to play “Kokomo”, and “Everlong”.

Steve touches bow to strings, sings softly under his breath - “Hello, I’ve waited here for you, everlong” - and he starts to play, the violin a far more expressive instrument than his voice could ever be, soaring around the words. Every movement of his arm echoes in the hall.

Except - he’s not playing the bass line.

Steve doesn’t lose focus, he doesn’t lose the song, even if he does look around, a little pleased and a little surprised.

And there is someone standing at the furthest keyboard.

The same someone who’d been leading them all through the practice take for “Scylla and Charybdis”.

Steve gets up, falling easily back into the chorus and its famous riff, and walks over to Bucky.

Who keeps up with him, nodding along to the beat, soundlessly shaping the words.

Steve nearly loses the melody as he watches Bucky’s mouth.

Their eyes meet, and Bucky takes one hand off the keys and waves it in a circular motion, and Steve hazily understands. He knows what Bucky wants, and he wants it too. 

A thumbs-up when he circles back to the chorus, and Bucky hits a couple of buttons on the keyboard and the melody he’s playing grows, digital horns and drums kicking in, and when they get back to the verses this time Bucky starts singing out loud, and Steve doesn’t see why he can’t join in, so he closes his eyes and sings, “You gotta promise not to stop when I say when, _he sang_.”

Bucky smiles.

And Steve doesn’t open his eyes, but he smiles, too.

_Click._

Steve blinks, and the Foo Fighters dwindle away into fading crystalline notes.

“Bobbi,” Bucky says, scratching the back of his neck. His expression is equal parts exasperation and affection and mischief. “Really?”

“Really,” Bobbi says with a bright smile. “Because I can. And because you looked pretty good together. Wanna see?”

But it’s Steve she directs the question to, and he blinks, and silently accepts her phone.

In the photo he’s - leaning in towards Bucky, who is sort of hunched over his keyboard.

“I could send you a copy,” Bobbi offers. “Or I could just tag you - what sites do you use - ”

Steve’s about to answer, when Bucky says, “Steve’s not into social media.”

Bobbi laughs. “You’re not? Well then I envy you!”

Steve offers her back her phone, and offers Bucky a smile, and he says, “Before they all come tromping back in like a herd of wild buffalo - ”

“Walruses,” Bucky offers, and Bobbi only laughs the harder, and he easily dodges the punch she aims at him.

“I just wanted to say, thanks for playing with me,” Steve says, smiling in spite of himself.

“Go away, Bobbi,” Bucky says with a grin, and that makes Bobbi roll her eyes and smack the back of his head, and then he turns back to Steve and says, “I let her do that on purpose. And - you’re welcome, and thank you, and - you’re good.”

Steve drops his eyes because he can’t just stare at Bucky. “Mostly it’s the violin.”

“Yep, it’s a very nice violin; I don't know where it’s been, I don’t know how old it is, but it sounds damn good. On the other hand, you happen to be playing it, so it’s you, too. Believe me. You’re good.”

Steve feels his cheeks heat up in response.

“Okay, everyone, let’s do this,” Julia Carpenter says when she comes back in. “Take one for real.”

Just as the cameras are about to roll, Steve wings a salute at Bucky with his bow, and Bucky responds by playing a crashing chord from “Everlong”, and Steve incorporates that chord into the cadenza at the end of “Scylla and Charybdis”.

“Holy shit,” Julia Carpenter says at the end of that take. “We may not actually need to do that again. That was perfect just as it actually was. Holy fucking shit.”

///

“All in favor,” Peggy says, and Bobbi puts up her hand almost immediately, followed by a contemplative-looking Melinda.

“That’s three out of five, do you even need me?” Bucky says, kicking back in his chair.

“A unanimous vote always looks nice,” Melinda says.

He thinks that over. “Point,” he says, and raises his hand.

“Which makes it official,” Phil says, nodding, and he turns back to his phone, which is lying face-up on the table, still in “Call” mode. “The band just voted on it. If you’re as done with the videos as you say, then put them both up already.”

“If we wait for Friday and the maximum possible media blitz - ” the voice of Julia Carpenter begins.

“We’re not waiting. They go up today.”

A sigh, loud even over the phone’s dinky little speakers. “You’re the boss,” Julia says. “I’ll put the URLs up on Twitter and you guys can take it from there.”

“Thank you,” Phil says. “Pleasure working with you as always.”

“That’s that, then?” Peggy asks after he hangs up.

“That’s that. You want to consider what you’re all going to do next?”

“I thought you said we could go home or something,” Bobbi says. “Like, a week’s vacation before anything else. Before we start flying around again or whatever.”

“I did,” Phil says, steepling his fingers underneath his chin. “So let me know where you’re going and I’ll make the travel arrangements.”

“DC,” Melinda says, promptly. “I want to go home. I don’t want to miss my niece’s birthday.”

“Done. Peggy?”

Bucky watches her drum her fingers on the tabletop. They’re in his hotel room again, and the table is really too small for all five of them and their phones, plus the oversized travel mug of coffee that Phil had carried in. “Then it’ll be home for me, as well. A pity a week won’t be enough for me to travel that way by motorcycle.”

“Another time,” Phil says, tapping rapidly at his phone.

“I’ll go with Melinda,” Bobbi says. “If you don’t mind,” she adds, looking sheepish.

Melinda pats her shoulder. “Absolutely not. And the rest of you can drop in at any time. It’ll just take a few moments to make egg tarts.”

“In that case, I’ll join you before the week is out,” Peggy says. “I’ll just turn up on your doorstep in time for dinner.”

Melinda grins.

“That leaves you, Bucky,” Phil says. “Plans?”

Bucky makes a face at him, and Phil makes it right back, prompting the others to laugh.

“Can’t I just - I don’t know, knock around for a couple of days before I decide?”

Phil raises an eyebrow at that, but he nods anyway. “So it’s like that, then? Okay, sure, do what you want, but you’d better be back in New York as soon as I call you in.”

“I’ll take a red-eye if I have to, and you know how much I hate taking red-eyes,” Bucky tells him.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“I think I can guess why you’re staying here, anyway,” Peggy says, and Bucky lets her nudge his foot with hers. “If I’m right, good luck.”

“Thanks,” Bucky says, to the others’ knowing smiles.

Phil’s phone chimes at him, urgently. “Videos are up. Lots of traffic within the first five minutes; that’s promising,” he says, and he sounds satisfied.

Bucky sees them all off the next morning, and then he’s only got himself to worry about.

The first thing he does is spread his notebooks out on the bed. Half-finished scribbles, a sentence here and there. He’s running low on pencils. The rain starts falling as he sorts through possibilities for one song or another, and in the end he goes back to the page he’d shown Melinda.

He wonders, idly, what Steve would do with those fragmented words.

Bucky spends two days by himself, doodling and sleeping and emerging every so often just for more coffee or a half-passable sandwich.

One by one, the others check in with him: Bobbi and Melinda from DC, Peggy from Virginia, and Phil from Oregon. The latter makes him laugh, because he gets a photograph of an unlabeled bottle of beer and the words _Beer for breakfast in Brewtopia, wish you were here._

 _Bring us back some good weird beers when we all meet up again,_ Bucky fires off in response.

It starts raining the day after Phil checks in, and Bucky just barely manages to tuck his hair into the hat he’d “liberated” from Melinda’s bag, and he’s not really thinking about walking onto the Kings campus, but when he stops and he’s on the Stephen Hall steps, he can’t really call himself surprised.

Around the corner and down a block, past beautiful old trees and the rain is so heavily scented with the flowers that have fallen onto the streets that he can taste it on the back of his mouth, and he’s looking at a series of windows. He can see people rehearsing. A girl who looks a lot like Sharon from the coffee shop, eyes closed as she sings. Three violinists in the next room, coached by an elderly woman who resembles one of Bucky’s instructors. (Was her name Mrs Kruger?) A flute-and-saxophone pair in the room after that one.

And at the end of that group of windows is an empty room. Someone’s left the lights on in that one. Bucky stands on the sidewalk, heedless of the drifting rain that patters softly onto the shoulders of his jacket, as he takes in the beautiful grand piano, black and gleaming and not currently in use.

He tries to remember Kings policy on outsiders in the rehearsal rooms, and almost shoots Bobbi an email, but he squares his shoulders and trots around the building to the front doors. It can’t hurt to ask.

The man at reception asks him a few questions and looks plenty suspicious into the bargain - but he lets Bucky in anyway, and says, “As soon as someone comes in wishing to use that room, we’ll have to ask you to step out.”

“I understand,” Bucky says, and he follows the man down the corridor. Scratch of keys in the doorknob. In a moment, Bucky’s alone with the gorgeous grand.

His hands actually shake just a little as he uncovers the keyboard. He folds the soft maroon felt away, places it on a small table tucked into a corner of the room, and he moves toward the bench and he temporarily has no idea what he’s going to do with himself now that he’s actually here.

But he sits up properly on the bench and he puts his feet on the pedals, and he reaches out to middle C and he doesn’t know why the echoes of that very elementary note leave him smiling and shivering with relief.

He’s stumped, when it comes to the words, but he’s suddenly overflowing with ideas for music, and he pulls himself towards the keys, starts running up and down the scales. Trills. Hands crossing over each other. Staccato and then legato and then -

And then the door opens.

Bucky looks up and he’s still playing, he can still hear his own hands moving over the keys and the song sounds a little like something from the latest U2 album, but he can also hear the rush of blood in his ears, because he’s looking up into the shocked blue eyes of Steve Rogers.

“Hi,” Steve says, eventually. He moves, looks at the door, makes a face. “Sorry. I wasn’t looking at the numbers. I’m actually supposed to be in the room across the corridor. I - I didn’t know you were still here.”

“Downtime,” Bucky says, and the not-quite-U2 song jangles to a standstill on a half-assed chord. “We’ve got a week off.”

“Nice,” Steve says, and adds, “I just watched the videos.”

Bucky swallows the trepidation, but with difficulty. “And did you like them?”

A grin, fleeting, but bright and real. “Very much. You guys looked really good. And your director made us look good. Thanks.”

“I’ll tell Phil you said that.”

He watches Steve’s eyes dart from his face to the piano. “I should - maybe leave you alone and practice. And I’ll go and practice, too.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, easy as anything, though he wants to keep talking to Steve. He has no idea what about, though.

Steve nods and closes the door, and Bucky listens to his footsteps cross the corridor. Another door opening and closing.

He wonders if Steve is still using the violin from the shoot, or if he’s back to using his own, and he wants to hear either one. Both, even, if possible.

So he stands up and sneaks away from the piano, and stands just inside his door. The squared window in that door is frosted, and likely so is the window in the door opposite his, so there’s no way of knowing if he can see Steve, or if Steve can see him.

But he can listen to Steve, listen for him, and he tries to do just that, now.

He recognizes the haunting tune almost as soon as Steve gets started, and he wonders what possible reason there could be for Steve to play _Libera me_.

The music stops, and Bucky blinks, and there’s a murmur from across the corridor that might sound like frustration and might sound like sheer bloody-minded determination.

From the top, and this time Steve manages to get through the whole thing, but he almost immediately starts over. Now the _Libera me_ makes Bucky think of brooding, of hopelessness, of despair.

The next run-through is interrupted by the shrill cry of a mobile phone.

“Hello?”

Bucky can hear Steve clearly, now. He’s not supposed to be listening to _this_. Reluctantly he goes back to the piano, and he thinks of something to play, something to block out the words -

“What?” A very small question.

Bucky jumps up from the bench and opens the door.

“No, no, no,” Steve is saying. He’s hunched over on himself; he’s leaning heavily on the wall. Even from across the corridor Bucky can see his hands shaking.

“I need to be there!” Steve shouts.

“What message?” Steve asks, and this question is broken up around a sob.

Bucky steps across the corridor, and Steve turns away from him and he’s not having any of that. He reaches out for Steve’s free hand, and holds on to it. Holds on as firmly and as gently as he can. He doesn’t know what’s going on. But he can offer Steve this much.

“I - you’ll keep me updated, please. _Please don’t let him die. Please, Dr Wilson. Please._ ”

“Steve,” Bucky says, quietly.

He watches Steve hang up, watches Steve stuff his phone in his pocket.

And then he watches Steve cover his face with his hand and then - sobs.

“Steve,” Bucky says, again, and on instinct he pulls Steve close, holds him tight. He rubs circles into Steve’s back.

Eventually Steve sags against him, and he can feel tears soaking through his shirt, and he can feel Steve’s arms wrapping around his waist.

Bucky doesn’t move. He’s here to support Steve. He’s here for Steve.

“Sorry,” Steve says, gasping wetly against his shoulder.

“Don’t apologize,” Bucky tells him. He cups his free hand around the back of Steve’s head. “No trouble at all.”

“Something bad just happened.”

He hitches Steve closer. “If you can, if you want to, you can talk to me about it. Not here, though. Come on.”

Bucky leads Steve across the corridor, and back into the room with the grand piano. He carefully extricates himself from Steve’s arms, and he pushes Steve down onto the bench, and then he sits down on the floor, just close enough that Steve can reach for him, just far enough that Steve won’t feel caged in.

“Breathe,” Bucky says, encouragingly. “In, and hold. Three, two, one. Now breathe out. Three, two, one. Are you following me?”

Steve nods, mutely.

“Okay. Good. Keep breathing.” Bucky rummages in his pockets. No handkerchief. He swears, quietly.

“Sorry,” Steve says, again, after another few minutes of gulping for breath.

“I said there’s no reason for you to apologize.”

“Got your shirt wet.”

“I have other shirts.”

That last sentence finally makes Steve laugh, even if it’s small and shaky and peters off quickly.

Bucky, in turn, offers him his best reassuring look. He’s trying to copy Peggy. She’s good at telling him things are going to be okay.

“I - I should tell you,” Steve begins, and then he scrubs at his tearstained cheeks.

“Only if you want to,” Bucky tells him.

“You’re wondering what happened, I can tell.” And Steve takes a deep breath. “It’s the professor. Professor Erskine.”

“The owner of the violin.”

A shaky nod. “My mentor. I think I told you that. He’s - he’s the guy who got me into music in the first place. He played the violin for my class when I was a kid. He - he - ”

Bucky watches, helpless, as Steve’s hands clench into fists. “He’s had a heart attack. They rushed him to the hospital. It was a big one - they’re trying to save his life - ”

When Steve starts falling forward off the bench, grief like a visible millstone on him, Bucky surges up onto his knees, holds him again, and he’s soon shaking from the force of Steve’s emotions.

He feels like he’s out of his depth. He wants to cry, too. He swallows and holds Steve as he breaks down.

“Is there anyone I can call?” Bucky says, during an interval of quieter sobs.

Steve doesn’t answer for a long time, and he nearly repeats the question - and then: “Not Bruce. He won’t take this any better than I already am.” The words are broken and cut off in places, brittle pieces strewn around Steve’s feet. “Call - call Natasha, or Carol, or Clint.”

“Okay. Give me your phone.”

It takes him a moment to find the names in Steve’s contacts list. Carol’s number goes to voicemail, and no one picks up Clint’s.

“Hello?”

“Natasha? Natasha Romanova?” Bucky asks. “It’s me, it’s Bucky Barnes - ”

“What happened to Steve,” she asks, immediately, and he nods, surprised and relieved and immensely grateful.

“Bad phone call. From a hospital. Professor Erskine has had a heart attack.”

Complete and utter silence for a very long moment, and then, she says “ _Shit,_ ” and the word is flat and absolutely without any inflections. He can hear the sounds of running. “Where are you? Where is he?”

He gives her the name of the building they’re in.

“On my way,” she says.

Bucky hangs up, and offers the phone back to Steve. “Natasha’s coming.”

Steve nods, silently.

He doesn’t take the phone from Bucky’s hand, so Bucky tucks the phone into a pocket of Steve’s jacket. “Your phone is here,” Bucky says.

Steve mutely holds out his hands.

Bucky grabs. Steve’s gone cold and clammy. “Hey, hey, Steve, come on, come back,” Bucky says. “Worried for you, here.”

He’s trying to shake some warmth back into Steve’s hands when the door opens quietly. Natasha looks pale, shaken; her red hair is in windblown disarray. Tear-tracks on her cheeks. But her voice is remarkably steady when she comes in and sits down next to Steve. “Hey. It’s me. It’s Natasha. Bucky called me. I’m here.”

Steve nods, again, still not making a sound.

“Thank you,” Natasha says.

Bucky nods, too.

“I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you could help Steve.”

“I can go now, if you want,” Bucky offers.

“No,” Steve says.

Bucky blinks, and looks at him. “Okay, I’ll be here for as long as I can, are you okay with that?”

A wordless nod.

“Let’s get you back to your room, Steve,” Natasha says, eventually, after Steve claims one of her hands.

“Bruce,” Steve says. “He won’t be okay - ”

“I’ll take care of him. I’ll take him to my place. I’ll deal with him.”

“I don’t want to be alone.”

“You’ll have Bucky,” she says.

“Yeah,” Bucky tells him, tells them both. “You’ll have me.”

He has a terrible and inexplicable urge to curl around Steve and hold him and let him cry.

Somehow he and Natasha manage to get Steve out of the building, remembering to retrieve all of Steve’s things. The violin he used doesn’t look at all like Professor Erskine’s. Bucky carries it carefully in his free hand, and maneuvers Steve into the back seat of Natasha’s compact car, before getting in after him.

Steve practically climbs into Bucky’s lap, still shaking.

A short distance, and then Bucky watches Natasha glare down anyone and everyone in their path as she leads them to what, apparently, is Steve’s room. The door is locked. She knocks three times, loud and booming, and snaps, “Bruce, open up. _Now._ ”

“Natasha,” Bruce says. “You’re Bucky Barnes,” quickly followed by, “Jesus Christ, _Steve!_ ”

“Quiet!” Natasha snaps, the word like a whip-crack. “Pack an overnight bag, bring your violin, you’re coming with me, I will explain when we are not here. Do you understand? _Move_ , Bruce.”

To his credit, Bruce does exactly as she says, and then Bucky watches Natasha take Bruce by the hand and lead him firmly out of the room. The door clicks shut behind them.

Steve steps away from Bucky, and falls into the nearer bed, and curls in upon himself. Bucky can just about hear him breathe. He doesn’t know why it worries him that Steve is no longer crying.

“Steve?” he asks. There’s a dinky and scratched-up desk next to him, and a chair shoved in with it, and he hooks it with hand and ankle and sits down carefully.

“You don’t have to stay,” Steve says, eventually. He speaks in a monotone. He speaks like all the life has been cut out of him.

Bucky recoils, feels like he’s been slapped. How he manages to say, “I’ll go if you really want me to go,” he has no idea.

“I don’t even know why you’re here. Aren’t you someone famous?”

“I’m only famous if you ask certain people,” Bucky says, and he stands up. Every bone in his body, every nerve he has, is heavy and reluctant and slow to react. His hands are still reaching out for Steve’s shaking shoulders. “And I’m here because, well. The coffee’s nice. I was trying to finish something that I started writing, oh, I can’t remember now. It’s been three weeks. I can’t seem to find the right words.” He can’t stop. “I asked the others for help, and, well, they didn’t have much to add.”

“If you left you might be able to finish it.”

“You said you needed someone earlier. But I’m not going to stay if you don’t want me to stay. If you’ve changed your mind,” he tells Steve, again, but when he looks over at the door he feels sick.

Silence.

Steve starts shivering, and he stays hunched over, turned away.

Nothing Bucky can do.

Steve is shaking so hard that he can hear it.

He should leave - he’s been all but asked to leave, despite Natasha, despite the fact that he doesn’t want to think about Steve by himself - but he wants to do something, and he’s coming up blank.

In the end, Bucky contents himself with taking his jacket off. He approaches the bed as carefully as he can, and he lays his jacket over Steve, and stepping away is difficult and he does it. He makes himself do it.

He barely has the strength to reach for the doorknob.

There’s a voice inside his head that sounds like the Steve that had been crying just a few minutes ago, the Steve that had been clinging to him, trustingly.

Bucky closes his eyes, turns the doorknob - and he whistles, softly, the tune escaping his lips before he can stop himself. _White wings on the wind, great weight and great flight, white waves washing the shore._ He doesn’t finish the verse, or at least he doesn’t, not until he’s on the other side of the door, on the other side of the click of the lock.

His breath rattles in his lungs as he walks straight back to his hotel room, as he sweeps all the papers on the bed into his bag, as he calls a cab and gets in and goes straight to the airport.

He doesn’t look back.

///

Steve sleeps, somehow, some way, and he knows he’s fallen asleep because he’s woken up by the shrill cry of his phone. He doesn’t remember how it got into his jacket pocket.

There’s another jacket on his shoulders. Where had it come from? Why does it smell like piano wire and dust and felt?

The number on the screen: it’s the same one that he was called from. That was earlier today, he thinks, or was it yesterday, or the day before that? He fumbles to answer. “Doctor?”

“Steve Rogers, yes, this is Dr Wilson,” says the voice on the phone.

The news crashes in on him again. “The professor?”

“Yes. I called you to let you know how he’s doing.” A throat-clearing sound. Steve presses the phone to his ear. He thinks he hears papers rustling. “We’ve been monitoring his condition for the past few hours. He seemed to be doing well at the outset but - ”

Steve takes a deep breath and wills himself to stop shaking. He can still hear the movement of his arms and legs against the sweat-soaked sheets. “But?”

“But we’re concerned about repeat episodes in the future. The prognosis after a second heart attack would not be good for him. So we will move proactively. We’re fortunate that Professor Erskine is relatively young and doesn’t seem to have any major health issues. He’s being prepped for bypass surgery right now.”

“Is that a dangerous operation? Is it risky?”

“As I said, Professor Erskine is young and relatively healthy, as bypass patients go. We’re reasonably certain that he’ll benefit from the bypass - that he won’t just survive it, but thrive afterwards.”

Steve exhales. “I - see, Dr Wilson. Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

“His family has indicated that you should also be kept in the loop with regards to his condition. I will call again when the operation has been concluded, although I cannot give you any kind of timetable right now.”

“That’s fine,” Steve says. “Thanks again,” and he hangs up, and this time he’s not prepared for the almost sick rush of relief that makes him glad he’s on the bed, that makes him painfully grateful to already be lying down.

The other jacket, the one he doesn’t recognize, falls off his shoulders as he flops over onto his back, and slowly he looks it over. Heavy leather, a little cracked along the seams, but the material is soft and supple beneath his hands. Black with a lining of tiny red stars. Pockets everywhere, though the surprising thing is that most of them are empty, and what Steve _does_ find are pencils. Worn and cracked stubs that leave dark stains on his fingertips as he finds each one.

And then he finds a slip of paper, many times creased, many times folded and re-folded, in the inner pocket. He doesn’t exactly recognize the handwriting. The words themselves are more familiar.

_White wings on the wind, great weight and great flight, white waves washing the shore_  
_Superstitions in flight, the haunting cry, the reminder of what was lost and what was never found_

It’s not a song that De Corday has released as a single. It’s the final track on their album, and it’s called “Mariner, Mariner”.

There are other lines up and down the piece of paper - whoever had been writing on it seems to have been intent on using up every scrap of space, smudges be damned - but those words, the words of the chorus, are the only familiar thing to Steve. The other lines look like published lyrics, but some of the words are wrong.

Someone was just singing that song, or that part of the chorus, Steve thinks, and -

He’s alone, why is he alone, he remembers someone talking soothingly to him, holding on to him, letting him cry -

Steve blinks, sits up in bed, as he remembers.

Oh, no.

He’s the only person in the room because he’d - he’d chased the other person out.

He’d sunk into himself and said “Go away” and the person he’d been talking to hadn’t known, didn’t know, couldn’t have known -

Days and nights of playing his heart out and no one to hear him, no one to play to. 

Oh, god, _he’d chased Bucky Barnes out_.

And Bucky Barnes had - he’d sung or whistled or said some of the words to “Mariner, Mariner” before leaving -

_Ring. Ring._

His phone is ringing again.

He closes his eyes and grits his teeth. Nothing good could come out of another phone call.

Shrill insistence.

It doesn’t make him feel better to look at the screen. Natasha’s name blinking up at him. She’s calling and she wants to know if he’s okay.

He’s not okay. There are a lot of reasons why he’s not okay. There’s an entire list.

Steve unclenches his jaw and his fists long enough to hit the Call and Speaker buttons in clumsy succession.

“Steve.” Natasha’s voice is a rockslide whisper, full of unhappy edges. “Steve. Are you there?”

“Yeah,” he tells her.

“How are you?”

She would have to lead off with the most complicated question.

He tries to deflect it. “The doctors called me again. They’re going to operate on the professor. Bypass surgery.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“They think so, yeah.”

A long, quiet breath let out. “That’s good. Good to hear.” There’s a squelch on the line and the next time he hears Natasha’s voice she sounds muffled and far away. Indistinct.

“Natasha?” Steve asks.

She comes back and says, “I used Thor’s phone to leave Bruce a message. I may have told him to stay in bed today. Lucky we can skip a couple of days’ worth of classes.”

“Is he okay?”

“He is. I stayed with him, and I made sure he was functioning. Are you all right? How are you? How is - okay, this is going to be a very strange question to ask, but - how is Bucky?”

And Steve exhales like he’s been slammed into a brick wall.

Is it going to be possible to evade her questions? There’s no point in hanging up because she’ll call again, and if he turns the phone off, she’ll come in through the door or through the window. There’s no way to escape her.

He swallows, and that feels like remorse shredding up his throat and his words, biting at his fingers as he says, “I’m not okay. Partly because of Professor Erskine. Partly because I did something very, very stupid.”

A soft inhale and an equally soft sigh. “What happened?”

“Remember how Bucky poured me into bed?”

“Yes....”

“I told him to go away and he did.” He says the words quickly, and they hurt. There’s no one to see him, but Steve hangs his head anyway. He feels far worse than if he’d kicked a dozen puppies. Repeatedly.

“Oh,” Natasha says.

“He whistled part of one of their songs and then he walked out - and he walked out because I told him to leave.” He wants her to hear that it’s his fault, he wants her to tell him that there’s something he can do about the whole situation, he wants her to say that there’s some way to fix this -

“Why, Steve?”

“I have no idea. I have no excuses.”

“You fucked up, Steve,” Natasha says, very gently, and he doesn’t deserve “gentle”, not from her.

///

_I knew, I knew_  
_If I landed_  
_When I landed_  
_That would be the death of me._  
_So I jumped_  
_And you, you never knew_

Bucky taps his pencil on the very edge of the flyer, and he leaves a soft black streak with each tap, and there are words in his head but they’re all jumbled up in a distant buzz.

Voices filter up to him from the open window - it sounds like people having an argument, or perhaps they’re rehearsing for something, or they might even be making music - and he doesn’t flinch when someone screams “Fucking hell!”, because he hears that a lot around here, because a day when he doesn’t hear someone yelling obscenities is likely to be a day when he’s not at home.

Truth be told, he feels like answering that shout with one of his own, only he doesn’t know what to say, and he doesn’t know why he wants to shout at all.

He hasn’t told the others that he’s slipped back into New York City, though he really should do that within the day, and maybe he should clean the loft because they usually meet here before they have to go somewhere else, wherever that somewhere else might be. This is the place where they gather before they have to head to JFK or to Newark or to LaGuardia, that’s just what they do -

But he doesn’t move. Instead he touches the spot on his shirt where he knows the large dark stain has dried. Salt and dried tears, clinging to the fabric.

He taps the pencil again, settles it back between his fingertips, and he closes his eyes and thinks for a moment, hums quietly and tonelessly, and the words fall out onto the flyer, soft and tentative, and in his mind’s eye he sees them as a certain shade of blue:

_When you say my name, my name_  
_Do you feel it_  
_Do you know it_  
_Or am I just a shadow_  
_The ghost in your dreams_  
_That you love, you loved_

And he knows that if he sings this, he’ll be singing it to just the one person. Doesn’t matter who’ll be hearing him. Doesn’t matter who’ll be listening. If Bucky ever makes something of this, if he ever decides to consider putting it on a list of songs to be committed to something as irrevocable as a CD, it’ll always be a song for a guy, for _that guy_ -

When his phone rings he’s almost glad for the distraction. Almost. His thoughts are running around in circles again, cold corners and cracked cement. So what else is new.

On the other hand, it’s Peggy calling.

Bucky takes a deep breath, and answers. “Peggy.”

“Bucky,” she says, and almost immediately she goes silent and still, the way she does when she’s about to throw down.

Bucky braces his feet.

“You’re not at Kings, are you?” she asks, and she sounds both acerbic and kind, and he has to swallow an undignified noise that might have been a sigh of relief.

“What gave it away?”

Gentler still is the next reply. “Not the background noise, Bucky. Just you. I only need to hear one word out of you to know you’re drawling.”

He smiles, sort of, thankful that there’s no one there to see. “I guess I am. I - it’s the sound of home to me.”

“And I’m glad that you’re home, but if you don’t mind me asking, _why_ are you already there? When we left you, you looked like you were ready to put down roots next to that river that you and Bobbi were talking about.”

“I wanted to do that, and then I didn’t. So I came back.”

She hums. “That doesn’t sound like the whole story.”

“It’s not, and I’m not telling it sober - ”

“Then don’t,” Peggy says, briskly, and why is Bucky not surprised when the next thing he hears after that is rapidfire footsteps followed by a knock on his door, and the careful scrape of a key.

“I don’t know why you knock,” he says to the sounds of Peggy taking off her shoes and her coat. Tell-tale undercutting clink of bottles. “You were the first person I ever gave a key to this place to, and you still knock right before you use it.”

Peggy smiles, and advances on him, and Bucky takes his feet off the opposite chair. Someone on the sidewalk starts singing, and he watches her cock her head and listen, before she quirks her mouth and shrugs one shoulder and sits down.

“Hi,” Peggy says.

“Hi. What happened to going to DC?” Bucky asks.

“I kind of thought I’d go over to Dominique Ansel’s.”

“Well, lady, you gotta move on, you gotta cross that bridge,” and he chuckles as he points out the window in the general direction of Manhattan.

“You’re between me and the bridge. It made sense to stop by.” Peggy puts a box on the table, rattling the six beers inside, and offers him the first bottle. It goes down smooth and almost citrusy, cool on his throat. “Especially since I notice you’re back to that song. I thought there was something to it. Perhaps it might have promise, perhaps not. May I see?”

Bucky makes a face, and opens the second bottle, and he passes it over together with his pencil-stained flyer.

“There’s real potential in this,” Peggy says, and then she starts humming, brief snatches of melody, before shaking her head and passing the flyer back. “But it’s too short. We could never get away with putting that on an album. Isn’t there any more?”

“I don’t know. I just got back here. I just wrote that second set of lines.”

“Do these lines have anything to do with what happened to you?”

Bucky nods, once, and he finishes off his first bottle in a few long gulps. He’s aware of her eyes on him. He’s not trying to escape her.

He’s actually a little grateful it was Peggy who saw him like this.

“Actually, I should tell you, since when all of this started I was trying to be a little like you,” Bucky says as he opens his next bottle, as he clinks it against Peggy’s beer.

“Me?”

“When you do the thing where you’re like the nicest and coolest mom who ever lived ever. Someone who knows how to look after people, without smothering them. And good-looking. Can’t forget the good-looking. We will never let you forget the postcards from Seattle. Hearts and glitter and hearts made of glitter.”

He watches her roll her eyes, and he doesn’t jump when she touches his leg with her socked foot. “Who needed looking after?”

“Steve - the violin guy,” Bucky says, and he hates the way his voice breaks a little as he says that name. “You know that thing in the movies, or in books, where you go out and you try to be cool and you want to impress someone, and then the world kind of just - ” He gestures, a little helplessly, and buries the rest of that sentence in beer. “Then the world kind of just kicks you in the ass. Not just once. Like, over and over again.”

Peggy hums again, and nods, once. “I can’t say I’m not unfamiliar with the concept. It is, after all, something we sing about. How many songs have we written on the topic, and how many have we sung?” He watches her finish her beer and reach for the next one. “Why did Steve need looking after, and was it you who got your ass kicked or him?”

“It was both of us, actually,” Bucky says, and now it’s getting cooler in the loft, and he closes the window he’s sitting next to. “You remember that violin he used during the shoot?”

“Yes?” He’s not surprised she looks annoyed. It sounds like he’s changing the topic.

“It wasn’t his. He told me whose it was, when I met him. It’s his mentor’s. Professor Erskine. We talked about him, or Bobbi did.”

Her eyebrows pull together into a straight line. “Something happened. Something bad.”

“Right in one. Heart attack,” Bucky says. “And there I was looking like an idiot, watching Steve fall in on himself. How I managed to keep my cool I don’t know. I don’t think I can do a very good impression of you, because - well, the kick up _my_ ass was, he let me take him back to his place and I offered to stay with him, I offered to look after him for a bit, and he said yes and then he said no. I got confused. I left.”

He closes his eyes, hunches over in his chair, and he resists, at first, when Peggy touches his wrist, tapping on the skin.

“Bucky,” Peggy says, and she really does sound maternal and warm, and that’s the last straw, he thinks, that’s the thing he can’t bear, and he puts his arms on the table and his head on his arms, and he grits his teeth against the prickling in his eyes, against the thorns encircling his throat.

Peggy’s hand on his shoulder, a steady warm grip. He’s not entirely sure he’s thinking at all when he moves his head so he can feel her, so she can put that same hand on his head.

“You like him, or you liked him, or - ” Peggy begins.

“I have no idea,” Bucky says.

“You couldn’t stop staring at him when we watched the video his friends had shot.”

“Didn’t you see him, Peggy? The way he played the violin.”

That gets him a slow, considering nod. “I did. He reminded me - perhaps he reminded me of you.”

Bucky hunches in on himself some more. “And this is where you tell me I’m doing it wrong.”

“Not necessarily,” Peggy says.

Bucky snorts quietly.

“No. Hear me out.” She tugs on his hair, once, nothing at all like painful. “I’d be concerned if I thought you were going to fall in love with an image. But that’s not what the photo says. Not what the videos say, either.”

“Photo?”

“The one Bobbi took of the two of you.” Peggy hums, softly, and it takes him a moment to understand that she’s riffing on “Everlong”, too. “Do you want to know what she said when she showed it to me and Melinda?”

He shrugs.

“She said she’d never seen you look at anyone the way you looked at him.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve had crushes before. I’m pretty sure I’ve done my fair share of walks of shame. I’ve even fallen in love. Was that you or was that Melinda?”

“Missing the point,” she says, very gently.

“I know. I don’t care. Why should I care.” He finally raises his head, and he looks at Peggy. “I can’t care, right? I can’t focus on my own shit. I can’t stay inside my own head. I’ve got an entire other list of things to worry about. Itineraries, and the people who’re going to interview us, and making sure we have enough Panadol and Imodium, and - ” He shrugs again. “Whatever. Gotta get out. Gotta forget.”

“Is it really going to be easy as all that?”

He stares at her. He whispers, “No.”

She nods, once, and looks unhappy. “All right.”

///

Steve trembles and carefully, carefully spins the melodies through the air, imploring sorrow, shivering faith, and he can hear Tony and Thor and Natasha’s parts, weaving into the music.

And the music grows and swells in his head. One violin somehow filling in for every instrument in an orchestra, the complicated interplay of tones and pitches. More voices. The one he’s focused on is rough-edged and yearning, and he finds himself following that errant strand of the music -

“Steve. _Steve!_ ”

And Steve blinks, and he’s standing next to the window in Thor’s flat, and the others are staring at him.

“Steve?” Bruce asks. “Where were you just now?”

Careful words, and Steve can hear the places where Bruce’s been overly delicate, so the entire question sounds like walking on eggshells.

He honestly doesn’t know how to answer that question. All he can say is, “I’m sorry, let’s start over from the beginning of that section - ”

“Now would be a good time to take a break,” Tony says, suddenly.

“Yes, that sounds good,” Thor says. “Coffee shop next door?”

“Buy me one of those green tea and cream concoctions, boys.” And then Steve blinks as Natasha offers her hands to the other two, as they flourish out the door, leaving him alone with Bruce - who then more or less takes him by the shoulders and frog-marches him over to the card table that is apparently where Thor eats if the (mercifully clean) plates stacked on it are any clue.

Bruce looks - well, he looks like he found something bad in his coffee cup, or maybe he looks like he’s about to go off, very quietly and very politely, on the guy who’d screwed up the burger order.

“It was that bad?” Steve asks, slumping over. “I’m sorry. Or does that no longer cut it?”

A long, soft sigh. “Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“When was the last time you slept?”

He tries to think about it. “Six hours ago.”

“Sitting up at the foot of your bed, with your hands wrapped around your mobile phone.”

“I went to sleep yesterday. You watched me brush my teeth.”

“You didn’t use toothpaste.”

“The day before that - ”

“You stayed up half the night making bowing movements, with your mobile phone as the bow. Your violin app shows the strings.”

Steve blinks, and the next words come out around a yawn. “Sorry. But what are you getting at?”

“You’re not okay, Steve.”

“No, Bruce, of course I’m not okay,” Steve says, and he bites down on the next words. He doesn’t want to complain about the brief updates on Professor Erskine’s condition, though they’re starting to repeat themselves, and all they do is make him worry, is wind him up like an abused string, because apparently the professor got through the operation without any problems - and that’s all the news there is. He’s lucky he’s getting updates at all. The Erskine family could have done him the courtesy of letting him know that something had happened and then left him to his own devices. “Professor Erskine - I’m worried - ”

“I know you’re worried about him, Steve, because I am, too, and I’m not the one getting any direct news. All I know, I know second- and sometimes third-hand.” Bruce speaks evenly, clearly.

“He’s important to me.”

“As he’s important to me, and to the others. Thor likes going drinking with him because he apparently knows the most interesting things about cocktails. Tony spent exactly two weeks in the dorms and didn’t run out screaming on the second day because that was the same two weeks Dr Erskine spent in the same place, on the same floor. He was the first person to ever coax Natasha into singing arias at all. You - you don’t have a monopoly on the man, Steve.”

“I know I don’t,” Steve begins.

“So stop acting like it.”

He tries to hold Bruce’s steady gaze, he really does.

“Was there anything else?”

Steve looks around, looks up and down and at his jittering knees.

“Steve, was there a particular reason why you looked like someone had already died when I came back to the dorm? After the impromptu sleepover at Natasha’s, I mean. She looked pissed off that you were by yourself. Not at you, per se. But at the fact that you were alone. Was there someone there?”

“Was,” Steve says, and he suddenly wants to laugh and cry at the same time. How many people get to do that after all? Get poured into bed by someone famous and then kick that famous person out? “Yeah, that’s about the right word for it.”

“Who was it?”

“Why didn’t Natasha tell you anything?”

Bruce tilts his head to the side. He looks like he might be thinking. “I - I don’t know, really. Why does she do something, or not do something? I’m just the guy who sleeps with her on a semi-regular basis. The fact that I hold her hand does not give me any more insight on her than I already have, and that’s not saying much. I won’t know more, and she won’t tell me. Not until she lets me in. Which is her decision and hers alone.”

Steve can’t tell if he’s actually putting his arms around himself, or if he’s folding his arms; all he knows is that his hands are wrapped around their opposite forearms. “Okay. Okay. You want to hear this? Okay, I’ll tell you. It was Bucky. Bucky Barnes. He’d stayed around, apparently, after shooting the videos. He was right across the corridor from me when I got the news about the heart attack. He could have left. He didn’t - he called Natasha and they pulled me to my feet and took me back to the dorm.”

Bruce nods. “So somewhere between that and me coming back - Bucky left. Why?”

“Because I told him to go away.”

Bruce looks thrown, but only for a moment. He’s back to the perfectly calm voice when he asks, “Why did you do that, Steve?”

Because he was too kind. Because he looked like he really wanted to be there. Because he could see the tears and the hopelessness. Because Steve doesn’t know what to do when faced with compassion and with kind strangers. 

“I didn’t want him to see who I really was.”

“Which is - Steve, you’ve lost me,” Bruce says. “What didn’t you want him to see?”

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

He has to give Bruce some credit - he looks like he doesn’t understand, but he nods, anyway, and he says, “Well, maybe I should tell you, because I don’t think we’re gonna get anywhere until you’re okay. Dress rehearsal tomorrow, right, and the big dinner’s the next night.”

“Yes?”

“Not just the big dinner. Pack an overnight bag. Tony’s flying us out to see Dr Erskine. He asked me and Thor to square it with the other professors. We’re good to go, we just have to do that _War Requiem_ thing. So if you can, if you want, please pull yourself together. Just another couple of days.”

“Okay,” Steve says.

**END SIDE A**

*****

**PLAY SIDE B**

Steve wakes up, slowly, and his feet are chilled and prickling and his shoulders are wrapped in something scratchy and heavy, and someone nearby is singing.

He recognizes the song, but not the voice singing it, which is thready and far too quiet, a little wobbly around the higher notes.

There is also a ringing in his ears. From last night, perhaps. Voices singing, and thunderous applause.

Steve shivers, swallows heavily, and his ears pop, but neither the ringing nor the singing go away.

That is, until the song peters away, very gently, like the tide pulling away from the shore.

“Hello, Steve.”

Steve looks up, and it all rushes back to him.

Last night’s dinner. Candlelight illuminating rapt faces. His collar, tight around his throat, and the bow tie that Natasha had knotted for him. Thor and Tony singing, and the way they each threw their voices to the high-vaulted ceiling. And Natasha, soaring above them both, contemplative and despairing in turn.

And afterwards, a bottle of champagne and plastic glasses as they got onto the plane. The kindly, weathered face of the man who introduced himself as Jarvis, who was going to be flying the plane. Steve remembers staring at the back of Jarvis’s head, all the way across the country, as the others dropped off around him.

All except for him. He remembers being awake for the landing, and for the short drive to the hospital. He must have fallen asleep here, and he’s been allowed to stay overnight, because he’s looking up into the face of Professor Erskine - too many lines, too much weight carved away, weight he didn’t have to spare.

The lines fade away, or change, or become deeper, when the professor smiles and holds up a trembling hand to wave.

Steve smiles though there’s something heavy in his heart, hanging in the corners of his eyes, as he copies the movement. “How are you, Professor?” he asks, quietly, bracing his feet against the wrong answer, against every possible answer.

“I’m hungry,” is the reply. “But they tell me I won’t be allowed to eat for another twenty-four hours. And then I have to start with things like oatmeal. White toast. I don’t like white bread very much. I have to wait until I can eat proper food again.”

Steve blinks. “How can you be hungry, when they’ve got you on an IV line?”

“That is not eating, and I know that you are aware of this. I want - ah, I want one of those strange burgers my daughter likes to make when she feels like cooking. No meat in it at all. Just a very large mushroom, grilled, and bigger than the bun she puts it into. I have no idea where they grow such monstrous fungi, and I am very sure that I would not like to know.”

Steve shrugs, and shakes his head. “I just eat the mushrooms people tell me are safe to eat.”

“Wise.” Professor Erskine shifts around in his thin blankets, and Steve remembers him moving with great and calm deliberation, except of course in those moments when he laughed and winked and sat on teachers’ desks instead of behind them. Slower movements, now, unsteady. “Now, it is time I returned the question whence it came. How are you, Steve?”

Steve blinks, and opens his mouth.

And before a word can come out the professor is speaking again. “Do you know, it was Natasha who led all of you in here last night, or was it early this morning? It was still very dark outside. I could still see the moonlight. In any case, she led you in, and she was the only one who stayed awake past the initial hellos.”

“Sorry,” Steve mumbles.

“No, it’s perfectly all right, because she also told me why you all looked like you’d come out of a party.”

“We were working, or at least Bruce and I were.”

“This I have figured out already. I congratulated her, and I congratulated the others, and now I congratulate you, now that you are awake enough to hear it. That program is difficult for even the most seasoned performers. She reports that you all got through it beautifully.

“But no requiem could explain the way you look at your feet, as though you had stepped on someone’s heart, or on your own.”

“Did she tell you about that, too?” The words come out muffled. Steve lowers his hands from his face and says them again.

“No, she did not,” is Professor Erskine’s reply. “I did not need to be told. I can see it in your face. Will you share your troubles with an old man?”

“You - you’re not an old man,” Steve protests. “The doctors said so. They said you were young and healthy, and that you’d do well after the surgery. Unless they were just saying that to make me feel better.”

“They were not; I have been reassured, and, more importantly, so have my family. I only have to stay here so that they can place me well on the road to recovery. And now you’re avoiding the question, Steve.”

He is. He hangs his head again. Where does he begin? “We met the band,” he says, slowly. “De Corday. They were - really nice people,” and he tells him about the day they spent on camera. He talks about Darcy’s teddy bear, the one made to resemble Melinda May, and he talks about Natasha’s high note, and he talks about the lights and the cables all over Stephen Hall.

Dr Erskine nods, at the end, and says, “I have seen the videos. Such energy and passion in the band, and such grace from the singers, as well as the chamber orchestra. So tell me about your cadenza. There was something very intricate in it, and I was very pleased to see that you made my violin sing so beautifully. What went into it?”

Steve says, “‘Everlong’,” and then he tells the story of the impromptu little jam, a song to fill up the minutes, and using the violin’s bow to salute.

That last gets him a small, sunny smile. “I never taught you how to do that.”

“It wasn’t you - I stole it from Fury.”

“Then I won’t tell him. Unless it was caught on camera somewhere. I am aware of such things as behind-the-scenes videos. Will they be doing something like that?”

“I don’t know enough about De Corday to know.”

“Fib,” the professor says, gently amused.

Steve musters up a smile. “They’ve never released any BTS videos.”

“I see. And this - Bucky Barnes. That is his name, right? You performed with him, both for the camera and away from it. But you don’t sound happy when you say his name.”

“He was there,” Steve sighs, “when they called me about you. When they told me you’d been admitted. And he was, he was kind. He offered to stay with me.”

There’s a silence, broken by a sigh and the weight of Professor Erskine’s hand on his shoulder. “Steve.”

Steve can’t look up. He doesn’t want to see pity.

“I think that I have gotten you into a scrape, and that it is partly my responsibility to get you out of it.”

The words make Steve look up, and stare. “What?”

The wink that the professor throws at him looks so familiar that Steve’s heart aches with the need to laugh. “You heard me. We shall make plans for when the doctors say that we can all go back to Kings.”

///

“Ready?” the girl in the almost unforgivably elegant summer suit asks, and Bucky watches as Bobbi tweaks at the sleeves of her jacket, as Peggy dabs a little perfume behind her ears, as Melinda tosses her hair back from her face and pops the collar on her leather jacket.

He just takes a deep breath, and extracts his favorite pair of sunglasses from his pocket, and as he puts them on he says, “Do it.”

The girl smiles, and waves at the men in the rich burgundy uniforms who are standing just at the doors - the men fling the doors open in perfect sync. 

A night full of camera flashes, a brisk breeze catching at their sleeves and hems and the ends of Bobbi’s hair and Melinda’s and -

“Oh my goodness, that’s incredible, that’s _loud_ ,” Peggy whispers, “even louder than when we came in at Narita - how do they do that - ”

Bucky doesn’t flinch back from the absolute _storm_ of cameras and mobile phones pointed their way, but only just. He’s had practice at dealing with crowds, at dealing with fans, at dealing with screaming voices. He throws his shoulders back, pushes his sunglasses up, stands straight and tall with the breeze raking at his hair.

He breaks out the wide smile that’s expected of him at these kinds of events, and he extracts his hands from his pockets and starts waving - and with every movement there’s more screaming, more blinding lights, more voices calling to him, more and more urgent. English and Japanese in a melodic mishmash. “Turn this way, please, Mr Barnes!” “This way!” “Look here!” “I love you!” “Barnes-san!”

Melinda and Peggy on his left and Bobbi on his right, and he stops waving so he can put his arms around their shoulders, and they stand together, stand to protect each other, and finally someone shouts and there’re unhappy grumbles in the crowd as the woman in the suit says, “This way, please follow me,” and he waves at the cameras and the screaming faces one more time before ducking his head, before he motions the others urgently forward.

Phil Coulson in the back seats of an oversized van, hauling each of them in with a firm hand. He looks harried and satisfied at the same time, even as he looks over the shoulder, throws someone a thumbs-up, and someone closes the door of the van with a satisfying crash and they’re all left in the silent semi-darkness.

Bobbi is the first to recover, once they’ve started moving. “That,” she says, “was a fucking _madhouse_. And we were only standing there for a few minutes.”

Phil nods. “I have to admit, I was expecting a crowd, but I wasn’t expecting anything like that. There’s a joke about being big in Japan that I probably shouldn’t be making.”

“I didn’t know we had that many fans, well, anywhere,” Melinda says, and only her wide eyes tell Bucky she’s just as surprised as he feels.

“I think you’re talking, and I can see your mouths moving, but I can’t hear a thing,” Peggy says, and Bucky reaches over to her, pats her shoulder in silent sympathy. “What the actual fuck.”

“Well, you’ve got tonight and most of tomorrow to recover from that,” Phil says, slow and calm and clear. “I’ve got your next appointment at around two PM. Quick interview and a song for a local variety show, nothing too heavy, they’ll provide translators and they might even give you something to drink, and then - it’s off to your concert. Sound checks start after four, and the gates open after seven, and you do know they put a premium on starting promptly around here.”

“Why’s that?” Bobbi asks.

“Because if an event starts promptly, there’s a better chance it’ll end promptly, which means people will be able to catch the last trains home or whatever it is they use to get around,” Bucky says.

“That’s - well, that’s very neatly put,” Phil says, blinking as they stop and start again. “Been reading up?”

“There’s nothing else to do,” Bucky says, slouching in his seat. Outside the heavily tinted window, he thinks he sees the last bits of blue fade into the brightly lit night sky, neon rainbows and serene smiles and this or that latest fashion fad. In the distance there are two towers rising above everything else. Tokyo Tower and the Sky Tree. Which one is which?

And he can see the others’ reflections as they glance at each other, as Bobbi shakes her head.

He doesn’t say another word - but that only lasts until they’ve gotten back to their hotel and he’s walking past the front desk when another porter, this one in a gray uniform, waves his white-gloved hand and says, “Package for Charlotte X!”

“Let me look into that,” Phil says, and Bucky steps out of the way of a handful of sprightly-looking elderly tourists clutching maps and magazines and high-end cameras, drawing the others aside with him.

“How can we even _get_ a package?” Melinda asks, frowning.

He thinks he wants to feel the same way as Phil signs for a white box and peeks inside - and then all he can see is raised eyebrows and what looks like a fleeting smile.

Into the elevator, out onto a corridor, into Phil’s hotel room - and then Bucky holds out a hand, wordlessly. “Obviously it passed muster, since you’ve brought it back to your room. So you’re letting us have it. It’s nothing dangerous.”

“It’s the farthest thing from dangerous,” and Phil starts laughing, soft and amused and - there are lines in his face that only appear at the end of a long hard set full of screaming and singing and ecstatic shouting.

Bucky grabs the box from him and flips the lid off.

Peggy reacts first: “Wow!” 

This is probably because the teddy bear on top has been dressed up to look like her. A red dress with a perfectly curved neckline, and the black boots she prefers to wear when she’s on stage. There is something very familiar about the domino mask: the same careful stitching, the same neat shapes, white for the “eye-holes” and black for the mask itself.

“Darcy - ?” Bobbi says. “Where’s mine - oh, but here’s yours, Phil!” Instead of a domino mask, the bear in the neat navy-blue suit is wearing a cute little pair of plastic sunglasses. “Oh, you can unbutton the jacket - that’s amazing - ” There is even a small black plastic rectangle in the jacket’s front pocket, which might stand for Phil’s mobile phone.

Despite himself Bucky reaches into the box for the next bear. What he pulls out is a bear wearing a white top, a leather jacket, and a yellow mask stitched to look like a pair of goggles, and he passes it over with a grin. “I think that might be you,” he tells Bobbi.

She laughs. “Where the hell did Darcy get the references, I don’t even have those goggles any more,” and she hugs it and smooths a fingertip over the patched-and-embroidered black nose.

“Which means that one of these is you,” Melinda says. She is holding on to two bears, one decorated in familiar piercings and a black jacket that does not have any silver-inked autographs on the back. As for the other -

Peggy laughs and reaches out to tug on a miniature blue sleeve. “You _lost_ this jacket a year ago, didn’t you? You made such a fuss about it! It was a trending topic!”

“Hashtag #WhereTheFuckIsMyCoat,” Bobbi laughs.

“It’s why we’ll never go back to Paris,” Phil says, and he looks really funny, with his bear sitting primly in his lap, but Bucky’s not entirely paying attention, and all he can do is be very careful when he plucks at the bear that Melinda is holding out to him.

Blue with red highlights and oversized black buttons to match the black nose.

He can’t say a word. He’s pretty sure he might have lost all of his words.

A bear, just for him, unexpectedly.

“There’s a letter,” Melinda says, and Bucky looks up at the sounds of paper being manhandled.

_Dear De Corday (and I’m crossing my fingers the bears actually find you because how embarrassing would it be if I made you all bears and then the bears got lost),_

_I made the bears, in case it wasn’t already obvious. (This is Darcy Lewis from Kings. You guys signed the first Melinda May bear. I am keeping that bear somewhere safe. I don’t want to lose the autographs. We are talking about a collector’s item here, that is just for me.)_

_I’m really sorry this took way, way longer than I’d hoped. I would have sent you the bears sooner, except something really weird happened, and I may have lost my shit for a couple of days._

_Long story short, I would have sent you the bears much earlier if someone hadn’t sort of broken into my room and stolen the original Bucky Barnes bear. Yeah. It got bear-napped. So what you’re getting in this box are two second-edition bears, when there should have been only one. Really sorry about that. I have no idea where the first-edition Bucky Barnes bear went, I really don’t, and I really just hope no one does anything weird to it. (Sorry. Possibly TMI.)_

_Anyway, as promised. Bears for the whole gang. I hope Mr Coulson likes the suit on his bear; it took me a whole day of googling around before I could settle on something that looked good and badass at the same time. I already had the mini sunglasses. Don’t ask._

_Maybe you’ll be able to send me some selfies with the bears, maybe not, but - yeah. I hope you like them. And thanks for coming by and being awesome._

_Darcy Lewis_

“I think we can do something about those photographs,” Phil says, and he sounds satisfied as he gets to his feet and very carefully sits his bear down next to his laptop. “But that can wait until tomorrow. For now - get some room service, get what sleep you can. You know what to do in case of jet lag.”

Murmurs all around, and Bucky tucks his bear carefully under his arm, and it isn’t until he reaches his door that he hears that there are footsteps behind him.

He turns around.

Bobbi is standing in the middle of the corridor, holding her bear up to cover her face, and when she speaks it’s in a soft, squeaky-toy voice. “Hi Bucky, are you okay?”

He sighs, and opens the door, and gestures for her to precede him in.

“No, I don’t want to come in, I just wanted to check in with you,” she says, still behind the bear.

“I’ll be okay,” Bucky says, and wonders why he doesn’t sound convincing to his own ears. “Just - tired.”

“I know how that feels,” Bobbi says, sounding sympathetic as she lowers the bear, as she speaks in her normal voice. “You’ll let me know if you’re hurting, right? You’ll let us know?”

He nods, and he holds his bear up and makes it nod as well. “I will.”

“Okay,” Bobbi says around a yawn, and Bucky watches her as she pushes into her hotel room, and only then does he go in and take his boots off. His feet _hurt_. He clambers into bed, slow like moving through syrup, and he curls up with the bear in his arms and doesn’t know how he can fall asleep, because he’s missing his favorite jacket -

///

Steve starts to play, up one scale and down the other, and the echoes in the room are muffled and they’re drowned out by the conversations taking place next door and downstairs, and he makes a face before he stops and shakes out his shoulders and tries again.

“Good, good,” Professor Erskine says from his easy chair. His feet, wrapped in brightly colored socks, are propped up on a nearby footstool, which looks not at all similar to the easy chair. A warm-looking dressing gown, all faded plaid patches. His hands might tremble, but he can still tap out a steady rhythm with his fingertips, as reliable as a metronome.

Steve squints and listens for that metronome as he keeps playing. A familiar weight in his hands: the professor’s violin, and he hadn’t known that he was missing its clear powerful voice until he started playing it again, just a few minutes ago.

(Apparently Natasha had brought it with her onto the plane.)

Steve shifts into practice mode: a handful of études, some at quick-march and some at a much slower tempo, until he can forget about the cool morning that hangs around Professor Erskine’s home - temporarily also home to his daughter and to her children - and just bend into the music and the weight of his borrowed instrument.

“Good. Now the Aria,” the professor says, and Steve nods. He thinks about the famous and instantly recognizable opening phrases from the beginning of the Goldberg Variations, and he draws them carefully from the violin.

“That’s not entirely my arrangement any more, is it?” Professor Erskine asks when Steve’s about most of the way through.

Steve smiles, shakes his head as best as he can when there’s a violin tucked beneath his chin, and flies through the closing measures, and when he’s done, there’s a pleasant warmth tingling in his shoulders and in his hands. “Bruce might’ve gotten to it at some point.”

“Ah,” the professor says. “That’s very clever of him. Now, Steve, we go back to you. Do you feel better?”

“I don’t feel too cold,” Steve says.

“Good, now give me the violin and I’ll show you something - ”

“ _Oncle_ ,” a little girl’s voice says from the other side of the glass door. “Package for - actually, it’s a package for Steve, but it’s got our address on it.”

Steve blinks. “For me? Where’d it come from?”

“The stamps say Kings,” the little girl says.

“Well, bring it here, Yasmin, or the suspense might just kill him,” Professor Erskine says.

Yasmin giggles, and vanishes from the door, only to return a few moments later with a package wrapped in brown paper, about the approximate size and shape of a shoe box.

Steve stares at his name on the label.

“Go on,” Professor Erskine says, encouragingly.

The wrappings fall away to reveal a shoe box, and there’s a note taped to the lid, and Steve thinks he recognizes the handwriting: _Read this first._

He clears his throat and reads.

_Dear Steve, you maybe owe me, and I definitely owe Darcy, and - I still maintain this was all done for a good cause. Do not under any circumstances RETURN the contents of this box to Darcy, okay, or I swear to fucking god I will ask both Clint and Bruce to kick you around and they’ll do it, they promised -_

“That sounds mildly alarming,” is all the professor says, however, and Steve skims the rest, and there’s not much to be gained from the signature at the bottom. _Carol._

He takes the lid off the box.

“Cute!” Yasmin says immediately.

“Bucky Barnes,” Steve says, very softly. “Bucky Barnes bear.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve can see Yasmin tilt her head, curiously. “Who’s that?”

“A - a friend of Steve’s,” is Professor Erskine’s reply.

In that moment he knows exactly what happened, and he has a wild urge to call Darcy up and tell her what happened, and he has another wild urge to call Carol up and - what? Is he supposed to yell at her for this act of - _bear-napping_? Is he supposed to thank her? If he yells at her are Clint and Bruce going to go after him? Clint has a reputation for his pranks, and Steve’s not interested in finding awful super-sweet popcorn in his clothes.

But he does none of those things. He taps two fingertips on the bear’s nose, over the curves of its ears, before he pulls it into his arms, before he curls in on it a little, and he clenches his teeth against the mad urge to apologize to someone who isn’t actually anywhere near him, and who will probably never be anywhere near him again.

Footsteps around him, the door into the house opening and closing, and when Steve finally blinks and looks up from where he’s clutching the bear to his chest, Yasmin is gone and there’s a cup of tea next to him, steaming a thin wisp into the air.

“You’re more of a coffee person, I know, and so for this I apologize,” Professor Erskine says as he carefully drops a sugar cube into his own cup. A real sugar cube. Steve stares at it as it dissolves. Where had the sugar cube come from?

Next thing he knows, the professor is dipping into the shallow dish next to his teacup again; a mostly steady hand and a pair of wooden tongs carved in flowering vines, and a sugar cube suspended between them.

Steve laughs, soft and watery sound, and he takes the offered sugar cube and waves it at his teddy bear’s nose before putting it in his tea.

“I know that there’s a story to that bear,” Professor Erskine says.

“There is,” Steve says, “and it has to do with the Melinda May bear. I told you about that, right? That Darcy made one and got it signed by the whole band, plus their manager?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the band asked her to make more bears. Commissioned her, maybe, or she volunteered. You’ve seen what happens when she’s making things. So - she did. But how I got this bear, well. That note. I think Carol stole this bear from Darcy, and sent it to me. I hope Darcy made a new Bucky Barnes bear to send on to the band.”

“None of which tells me why you’re holding on to it in almost the same way you’ve been holding on to my violin today.” Professor Erskine steeples his fingers. “You look like a drowning man, who’s been thrown a bit of cord, and there is not much to the cord but that does not stop the drowning man from holding on.”

Steve makes a face, and reluctantly puts the bear down.

“No, no, I’m not asking you to put it away. If it makes you feel better, keep holding on to it. Or should I say that you _will_ be needing it?”

Steve thinks he doesn’t quite hide his wince, because the professor frowns at him, if only for a moment. “You’re determined to play. To do something. I thought you said you were going to try and look for another idea?”

“Yes, and that other idea is, I’m going to be sitting down while I play. And you could do the same, actually, so what is there to worry about?”

“Why are you helping me, again?”

A quiet chuckle that somehow sounds kind. “As I said. I am taking responsibility for my role in your current - scrape, shall we say.”

“You had nothing to do with it,” Steve says, a little vehemently. “You couldn’t have wanted to have a heart attack - ”

“Steve,” the professor says, suddenly.

He can’t help it. He sits up and closes his mouth and folds his hands together in his lap. There’s something in that tone that makes Steve sit up and pay attention.

And listen he does as Professor Erskine sighs and takes the violin back, and runs the bow over the strings so they sing softly, almost soothingly, and Steve can’t help but lean in, toward that gentle improvisation.

Which soon shifts into something more intent, something that becomes more familiar with every passing moment, and Steve picks up his own violin - which has been sitting next to his chair all this time - and checks the strings and the bow in near-silence.

He waits for Professor Erskine to nod before he joins in. They’ve performed this piece before. One of Vivaldi’s concertos for two violins. It’s supposed to be backed up by a string ensemble. Steve concentrates on his part and lets the professor and the professor’s violin lead him through, presumably to the end of the piece (or at least the movement) and to safety.

“Good, that was good,” Professor Erskine says, after, though Steve has to help him steady his hands around his teacup. “You played your part very well. And - there was a point, you know, to that demonstration.” Another smile, though this one looks softer than the others. “That’s been you, Steve, hasn’t it, all this time? I go, and you follow. Your footsteps walk the same path I’ve trod. And while I commend the loyalty, I think that I must also speak about it getting out of hand.”

Steve reels back. He feels like he’s been slapped.

“Let me finish,” Professor Erskine says, almost pleadingly. “Steve, I know that the music’s part of you, something that exists in your nerves, in your bones. I also know that you think you _owe_ me something because I helped open the door, because I was there when no one ever was, because - ” He spreads his hands, just a little. “Do you think you need to tip the man who opens the door for you, but only because he himself must go through that same door?”

“What?” Steve asks.

“I was your - ah, what is the term - _gateway_ \- to music. To performing music and living it. To the violin. By walking my path, the path I have taken, you find yours, which is similar to mine. _Similar_ , I must stress, not identical, which is as it should be, since I am not you, and you are not me.”

“Professor,” Steve says, slowly.

“Not yet done. Our paths are not one, Steve; and your own talent has proved that, because I struggle with certain kinds of music and you flourish, and the reverse is also true. I have a path, and you have yours, and whatever obligations you might feel towards me you have already more than amply discharged. You made me proud when you stepped onto the stage for your first recital, and you were afraid and you were _alone_ and your hands were shaking - but that didn’t stop you from playing beautifully.”

“It wasn’t perfect.”

“I wasn’t looking for perfection. I was looking for you, and for your emotions. Your understanding of the music. You showed a spark of that then, and that was when my work was done.” The Professor shrugs, a quick sparrowlike hitch of the shoulders. “You owe me nothing, Steve. _Nothing._ Truly.”

“Professor,” Steve tries again.

“Steve. You’ve been happy with the violin, I know this, I understand this. And you can be happy with other things, with other people, with friends and with books and with music I don’t understand and - and with someone important. Someone special.”

“How do I know anything about that?” Steve finally bursts out. “So what if I liked, if I like, Bucky Barnes? Is that supposed to _mean_ anything? So he was nice, so he played with me, so he was not an asshole - so what? Do I know him any better after I played a song with him? Does he know me any better?”

“How will you know,” Dr Erskine says, “if you don’t give him a chance to try? If you don’t even give _yourself_ that chance?”

Steve shakes his head, slumps back down into his chair, puts his head in his hands and then, as an afterthought, grabs the bear and squeezes it. “I think I lost that chance.”

“This is what I have been trying to do for you, Steve - give you another chance, if I can. If we can.”

“With Vivaldi,” Steve says, giving in to the inevitable, though it’s a slow process and he fights it every step of the way. “And - what, my mobile phone? I don’t think I can record the whole ten minutes.”

The professor grins, suddenly. “Pah. Even Yasmin can work a tablet, one with a better camera than your phone’s. We shall enlist help.”

///

“You sure you want to record this? Three verses?”

Bucky sighs, and puts his hands behind his back, and swallows hard against all the ideas in his brain. He could take the sheet of paper back from Bobbi and tear it up. He could take the words back and burn them, for all the good that’ll do. He’s done that before.

He could laugh and say he’s just joking. He could - okay, maybe he’s not going to open the window in his hotel room and jump out, or anything. The fall would kill him and so would Phil, after he’s been picked up or scraped off the sidewalk below, and he has no doubt that he’ll survive Phil but he wouldn’t survive the others telling him off.

“It’s mostly music, and a few lines to sing,” Bucky says, instead. “It might be demanding, or it might not be. I thought there should be something more spontaneous to it. Like a short jam, you and me, every night, while Melinda and Peggy take five.”

“Because you’re pretty sure I don’t need to take a break?” She laughs, though, to tell him she’s not exactly jabbing at him, or at least not as viciously as usual.

“Because you’re the one of us who rabbits around all over the stage like she’ll never ever ever get tired,” Bucky says, trying on a smile that mostly fits.

“And afterwards I crash like tomorrow’ll never come. Or until someone revives me with pancakes and really sloppy eggs.” Bobbi laughs, and Bucky lets out a breath he doesn’t know he’s been holding. “Okay, okay, you’ve got my attention, not that you didn’t have it, because we were there when you started this and now - now it looks like you might’ve finished it?”

He shrugs. He’s still standing at the window. They’re flying back to New York at midnight. Melinda’s dragged Phil out on some kind of tour, seeing old temples or something, and Peggy’s apparently gone out on some kind of shoe safari, and he’d expected to spend the day alone, until Bobbi’d knocked on his door and offered him a box of sweets.

That box is on the bed, next to Bobbi’s hand, and he doesn’t feel hungry, but he crosses back towards her and takes a second piece anyway. A bite. Red bean paste blended with sugar, thick and tooth-sticking, hard to lick off. He’s not entirely sure he can do that, but he tries his best, and as he does he looks over her shoulder, watches the progress of her finger down the penciled lines and the little annotations for key and chord and tempo. “Any good?”

“Maybe revise this and this,” she says, pointing to the last two lines. “Going down a little, instead of going up. Or would that sound too depressing?”

“We can try both,” Bucky offers.

“I know. Pencil?”

He offers her the stub in his pocket.

“Thanks. Okay, you tell me when we’re gonna start. Do you want this back?”

Bucky shakes his head. “I know all of the words.”

“There aren’t a lot of them, this time,” Bobbi says, teasing, and then she goes for her acoustic guitar. The back is decorated with a mess of stickers, and the head with a dozen ribbons in different patterns and colors. How she keeps the ribbons pristine and not all tangled up is something that Bucky can’t figure out. He’d wanted to decorate his keyboard, and the one week he’d tried it the stickers had fallen off after only the second performance.

When Bucky closes his eyes to take a deep breath, he sees a flash of blue, familiar and strange at the same time, and he nearly misses the cue that he himself has written to begin singing - but he catches himself, catches up, and he carefully doesn’t look at Bobbi.

He runs through the lines, and she provides a steady background thrum that keeps him going until he’s finished the first run-through, and he looks up at her, after.

She’s not looking at him - she’s looking at his lyrics like there’s something _off_ about them, or like they’ve personally offended her.

“Nope, they haven’t,” Bobbi says, and that’s when Bucky realizes he’d spoken out loud. “I’m just - I’m not sure that was the right style for you to be working with. Were you really planning to, I don’t know, _sing_ them?”

“You want me to do anything else with them? Twerk them out, or something?”

Bobbi laughs. “You would never, not in a million years. But fuck, the money I’d give to see you twerk.”

“You and the whole world,” Bucky tells her, dryly, and he doesn’t roll his eyes but he comes dangerously close to it.

“Because you’ve got a nice ass, come on. Though we’re not talking about it - ”

“Thank you,” he says, loudly and obnoxiously.

Bobbi laughs again, then blinks, and she’s serious and he pays attention, because she’s saying the words and she’s not singing. Reciting?

_I knew, I knew_  
_If I landed_  
_When I landed_  
_That you would be the death of me._  
_So I jumped_  
_And you, you never knew_

_When you say my name, my name_  
_Do you feel it_  
_Do you know it_  
_Or am I just a shadow_  
_The ghost in your dreams_  
_That you love, you loved_

_You’re here, I’m there,_  
_And do we shout_  
_Do we shout_  
_So we can stop being fools_  
_So you can hear me_  
_And you can know, you know_

“It’s not - it’s not performance poetry,” Bucky says, but he’s already considering the stride of each line, the way each word would roll into the distance, if they were half-spoken.

“Nope, it’s not. Let’s try it,” Bobbi says, and this time he watches her fiddle with her mobile phone, looking for something on its screen, and when she puts it down between them there’s a mic glyph on the front and it’s blinking red at him.

Her phone will start recording once the mic glyph turns green, he knows.

So he takes a deep breath, counts off three seconds, and when the screen flashes he nods at Bobbi to begin playing again, and this time the lines fall out, a little hesitant, a little tentative, and she does something complicated with her guitar, a flourish of spun-silver chords, and Bucky whispers the last line before reaching over to the phone to stop it recording.

“That - that sounded much better,” Bobbi says as she listens intently to the playback. “It sounded good. It sounded right.”

“You think so now, but wait till the others get to it.”

Bobbi shrugs. “I’m pretty sure Pegs will have something to say at the very least. Melinda, I have no idea, but you can at least think about how she’s gonna give you a chance.” She looks satisfied as she tucks her mobile phone away. “Got title?”

He opens his mouth, and closes it, and shakes his head. He feels a little helpless. Titles are not his strong suit, either for an album (Peggy had come up with _Silver Red Star_ ) or for songs (he’s lost count of the number of times Melinda has pointed out a lyric to say that it should be the title for the song, like “Run and Howl”).

At least he doesn’t mention Steve, or anything connected to Kings. Bucky can do that much.

Bobbi, however, seems to be under no such restrictions. “I know,” she says, clicking her fingers once. She’s smiling, and the smile is a mix of fond and sweet and also faintly mocking, and Bucky opens his mouth to say “No”, but then she says “‘Stephen Hall’,” and he has nothing to say.

“Yes no maybe? Otherwise it’ll be something like ‘Lady Chapel Blues’ and you’re going to chase me around the room with sticks ’cause that’s a sucky title, so. Come up with something of your own to beat those two. Or, better yet, choose one of them!”

“You’re just looking for an excuse to say that we actually wrote a song for Kings.”

“Who, me? _I_ didn’t write anything,” Bobbi says, dipping back into the box of sweets. “That was all you.”

Bucky takes the lyrics back from her, and he thinks about reciting the words again, and he thinks about the stained glass and the intricate tiles, about a snatched duet of “Everlong”, and he nods and says, “‘Stephen Hall’. Okay. I think I can live with that.”

///

There’s silence for a full minute after the video ends and the screen on Natasha’s phone goes black, and Steve shuffles his feet awkwardly, though he’s still sitting down and he’s not moving anywhere. Nowhere for him to go, in any case, because Natasha’s sitting between him and the door, and Carol’s got her hand on his shoulder, plus Thor is leaning on the wall next to the door.

The classroom is four floors up, and there aren’t a lot of windows, just a pretty line of them up high near the ceiling, lines of small colorful panes marching in straight lines. Not a viable escape route.

Suddenly, Bruce says, “Are you sure you didn’t have, like, an orchestra backing you up?”

“It was really just me and the professor,” Steve says, and he’s said this three times already.

“I don’t believe you,” Kate says from the row behind theirs, around the quiet swishing sounds of her brush.

“That video might just go viral,” Tony says as he taps away at his tablet across the aisle. “Not something that normally happens for a classical selection like this.”

“Especially when it’s about ten minutes long and all we see are two people playing,” Natasha says, but she’s nodding, and she looks contemplative. “Oh, and a teddy bear. Although maybe people might watch it for you, Steve. You did dress up for the occasion.”

Steve knows his ears start to burn before she finishes that sentence.

“Dress up?” Clint snickers, and then pounds Steve on the back. “Okay, maybe you did. I never thought you’d make that beat-up hoodie of yours look cute. Maybe it’s the violin, hey, Katey-watey?”

“ _I told you not to call me that,_ ” she shrieks, and then they’re scuffling around on the sunbeam-etched floor despite the chairs and the broad steps, and Bruce just rolls his eyes and moves his chair out of their way.

“That was quite an audacious performance,” Thor says as he approaches. Steve watches him toe Carol’s feet out of his path and then sit down very carefully in the right angle between Bruce’s shoes and Natasha’s flying-toaster socks. He should be uncomfortable, given how he’s leaning stiffly in the direction of the row in front of theirs, but he focuses steadily on Steve. “However,” he says, raising his finger. “And this is not meant to slight either you or Professor Erskine. Your combined talents are quite formidable. But you know that Jane will not stop talking about the end of the video.”

Steve shakes his head and looks away. That hadn’t been his idea. He’d only seen it when Professor Erskine had showed him the video for the first time.

In the video, he plays a violin duet with the professor - one of the concertos from Vivaldi’s _L’Estro Armonico_ \- and true to his word, Professor Erskine had performed from his wheelchair, which had dimmed the powerful voice of his violin not at all.

At the end, however, there is a brief shot of Steve looking out of frame, the last hints of sunlight illuminating the lines in the corners of his eyes.

Between the “Scylla and Charybdis” and “Run and Howl” videos and this one, the lines seem to have multiplied and deepened, by his own count.

That shot is followed by a card held up in slightly unsteady hands. Spidery handwriting in greenish-black ink.

The text on the cards says, _To J Barnes apologies from A Erskine (on behalf of S Rogers)_

“I had nothing to do with that last part - that was all the professor,” Steve says.

“I know,” Thor says. “And Jane and I wish you only the very best of luck. Let us hope that you will hear from the band soon.”

“I’m not sure that’s going to happen,” Steve begins, and then the door into the classroom crashes open.

“Steve Rogers!” Darcy sings out, voice full of startling cheer, more than enough to fill the classroom with echoes. “ _What the hell have you done!_ ”

It’s not a question, and she’s grinning far too widely, and Steve sighs, covers his face with his hands, and waits for her to bounce up to him.

Next to him, Carol looks almost like a deer trapped in headlights, if deer trapped in headlights wore clunky combat boots and bright red short shorts.

He’s going to have to talk to her about that. It might have something to do with his Bucky Barnes bear.

///

“There are rumors of a new song out,” the woman, Pepper Potts, says, and her white suit gleams beneath the studio lights. She leans forward, looks kind and also looks a little bit eager, and, okay, Bucky’s more than used to dancing this particular dance. “Care to let us in on the secret?”

“We’re working on something,” Bucky says, and that’s all he has to say on the subject.

“Well, considering the furore surrounding the Kings videos, we’re hoping this might be something just as big.” Whatever else Pepper might have to say, however, suddenly dies on her lips, because even Bucky can see that one of her assistants is waving frantically at her, and she only has enough time to look at the camera and say, “And now a word from our sponsors - we’ll be back after the break!”

The lights dim, slightly, and a young man with a small makeup kit descends on Bucky, carefully and dispassionately dabbing away the sweat in his hairline. Bucky sighs and shakes his head and submits himself anew to the horrors of a fresh coat of lipstick. Whose bright idea was it to make him wear pink lipstick, he’d like to know. At least the others have better taste. Melinda’s and Bobbi’s tastes occasionally run to black lipstick, and they’ve tested those colors on him, which is how he knows that there are a couple of brands that actually suit - or so the social media reactions have led him to think, when he bothers to check, when he bothers to wear the lipstick in the first place.

“Mr Barnes,” Pepper says, and Bucky catches the respectful little nod she sends the makeup person’s way, which is returned with a bright, if fleeting, smile.

“Ma’am,” Bucky says, and he would get up if she weren’t motioning for him to stay in his seat.

“I’ve just been informed of something that - ahem - apparently has your name on it.”

“What?” Bucky asks, just as his pocket buzzes, loudly. He fishes his phone out.

It’s Phil.

“I think you had better take that,” she says, kindly. “I can see it’s your manager. He might be the better person to brief you about this.”

Bucky shoots her a bewildered look, and then picks up the call. “Care to explain what’s going on? I’ve just been told there’s something out there for me. What is it this time?”

“Hello to you too.” Phil sounds amused and perfectly, perfectly neutral, despite the rasp in his voice that was, apparently, the only other thing he brought home from their Tokyo jaunt. “Have they told you what this something is?”

“The nice lady in the suit was going to, and then you called, which makes you the nice man in the suit who’s going to put me out of my misery. Right?”

“Yes, I’m going to send you a link - ” Pause, and Phil’s voice sounding far away and clipped. When he comes back, he says, “It’d be better if you could watch that video on something with a proper set of speakers, since the music’s worth listening to. Well. That might be an understatement. As for the performers, well, I think you know one of them, and you know _of_ the other, by reputation.”

“All I picked up from that is that you’re sending me a video and there are two performers and - Phil, I don’t understand,” Bucky says, pleadingly, “ _why_ is my name on this thing?”

“I don’t want to spoil the surprise,” and how Phil sounds clipped and casual despite the bite of his cold-cough-throat problem-whatever, Bucky doesn’t know.

When he hangs up on Phil, Pepper says, “He’s right, you know. Better to watch this on an actual TV than on your phone. If you’ll please look over there.”

Next to the prompter screen is an identical monitor with a browser window already open, only someone outside the studio has just pasted a Youtube URL into the address bar.

Bucky fidgets, because he doesn’t know what else to do, until the requested page comes up and the video starts - and then he stops moving altogether.

The legend underneath the video says _Concerto for two violins, strings, and basso continuo in A minor RV522 Op. 3 No. 8 “L’Estro Armonico”_ , but he doesn’t have any time to parse the abbreviations, because all of his attention is focused on the man in a half-lit rehearsal room. The room looks a lot like the ones at Kings. There are curtains drawn over the large window, and half-gray sunlight seeping in around the edges.

The man in the rehearsal room is sitting in a wheelchair, though he seems comfortable, what with his pillows and blankets and the fuzzy afghan draped over his lap - none of which, however, seem to get in the way of his hands as he accepts a violin case from offscreen.

“I know that violin,” Bucky mutters under his breath. Indeed, as the man in the wheelchair tucks that instrument underneath his chin and works through a sprightly scale, something quick and sweet, he knows he’s heard that amazing clarity of tone before, the startling bright depth of its voice -

And then Steve comes into the frame. He’s carrying two music stands. One he places just in front of the man in the wheelchair; the other he puts off to the side. A riffle of pages: the sheaf Steve arranges onto the first music stand is all yellowed paper and the flourish of black staves and notes.

Onto the second music stand goes -

Bucky makes a sound that he will never be able to describe or duplicate.

A bear in a blue coat, with a somewhat more lopsided domino mask than he’s familiar with on four other bears, each dressed to correspond to a member of De Corday (including Phil).

Steve has a Bucky Barnes bear, and Bucky remembers the note that had been sent to them with the package containing two second-edition bears, and he has a moment to wonder about Darcy Lewis before Steve and Professor Erskine - because who else could this be, when he holds the violin that Steve had played to masterful effect during a long day in Stephen Hall - nod to each other. Steve shakes out his hands, one after the other.

The professor taps his bow on his violin. Murmurs out a few words that Bucky can’t quite catch.

Right from the beginning - pure and overwhelming power. Sweet stirring music, effervescent, two violins singing beautifully with and against each other. Precise movements and intricate harmony. The gossamer strength of a Vivaldi composition, technically challenging and beautifully complicated.

“Neither of them are looking at the - thing, the score,” Pepper says. She sounds surprised.

That’s not the detail that catches Bucky’s attention; the detail that catches Bucky’s attention is the fact that Steve keeps leaning in the direction of the teddy bear, quietly propped up to the side as though to stand in for an audience.

There’s one more surprise at the end: Steve looking away, ducking out of frame, sweeping up the bear in his wake - and Professor Erskine holding a hand up to the camera.

“Is he gone?” the professor asks, next. And then he pulls a sheet of paper from somewhere in his wheelchair, a little crumpled around the edges, but seemingly no worse for wear.

“And that’s why,” Pepper notes.

Bucky only has a moment to read his own name in that spidery handwriting before everything fades to black and a grid of related videos.

“I’m guessing,” Pepper says, and she even manages to sound kind, “that you weren’t expecting any of that.”

Bucky almost jumps. He takes a deep breath, makes himself answer. “I - know what’s going on. But I don’t think I can talk about it. Not now.”

“A pity. I would have liked to order one of those bears.”

///

The knock on his door is followed by a shushing sound and the scrape of a key, and Steve blinks slowly. He keeps his eyes on the ceiling, even when Bruce bends over him looking concerned, even when Carol waves a bottle of something in his face. “I can’t stop you from drinking in here,” he tells her. “But please go somewhere else if you’re going to have hangovers.”

“What’s a hangover?” Carol asks, bright and amused, and Steve can hear the reluctant rumble of Bruce’s chuckling.

“I thought you’d be studying,” Bruce says after a few minutes of chairs scraping on the floor.

“All done. I took the test yesterday.”

“Early?”

Steve shrugs.

“So does that mean you’re on break or - ”

“I’m here,” Steve says. “I’m - not going anywhere.”

“You’re not going home, or to the professor’s?”

“I don’t want to go home. And I don’t want to go to Professor Erskine’s. I’d be underfoot. Here, I don’t have to bother anyone.” Steve can hear his own voice, slow and deliberate and unhappy.

“And if we want to be bothered by you?” Carol asks.

“You’ll have to wait,” Steve says, a little unkindly, and he rolls onto his side, away from their voices. It’s warm in the room, but not warm enough for him, and he hauls the blankets up to his chin. He hunches in on himself. He ignores the prickle in his eyes, the scratch in his throat.

The room is small, however, and neither Bruce nor Carol are keeping their voices down, so he’s stuck listening to their conversation, because he doesn’t have the strength to find his phone and his headphones. Movement is a mountain he’s unwilling to climb.

Carol says, around the _clink_ of a bottle being put down somewhere, “So I have to model stuff for Darcy now. Something like that. I’m not sure the punishment befits the crime, because I’m not entirely sure there _was_ a crime that was committed.”

“You did abscond with something that she’d made.”

“I did it for a good cause, Bruce.”

“I know you did, Carol. Still. Who knows what would have happened if, I don’t know, you’d just asked.”

“Whose side are you on anyway?” Carol grumbles for a good minute or so.

“No one’s. I have to be the objective observer, since no one else seems interested.”

“Taking sides is more fun.”

“Not all the time.”

Steve shifts, closes his eyes, reaches blindly around in his bed for a pillow to hold on to.

Instead he comes into contact with the now-familiar shape of a soft paw, and he really doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

He burrows deeper into his blankets to find the Bucky Barnes bear. Dim as his conditions are, he can still see the vivid blue and red of its jacket. It lacks an expression, but there’s something about the set of its ears that makes Steve think it must be looking kindly at him.

Which - _why_ would the bear do that? He’s not sure he deserves it. Professor Erskine has tried to reassure him, and Steve’s - not really getting it. He doesn’t even really get the part where Carol and Bruce are, rather transparently, trying to make him feel better.

This is what years of recitals and playing to empty chairs have done to him.

He can’t stand to look at the bear, and can’t stand to put it away either, and he’s stuck holding on to it. Futility twangs through him like a chord struck on discordant strings.

“I’m so sorry,” Steve whispers to the bear, between its ears.

There’s another knock on the door, and he can hear the surprise in Carol’s voice when she asks, “Were we expecting anyone else?”

“No,” is Bruce’s reply. “But it seems that this year’s been a whole lot of interruptions and strange things happening at strange times, so.” Footsteps moving past Steve’s bed. The sound of the door being opened. “Um, hello?”

“Hi. This is a little unexpected, I know,” a woman’s voice says. “Jane Foster.”

“Yes, I know,” Bruce says, faltering a little. “I mean, I know who you are, and I remember you. Come in?”

“Only if Steve is here,” Jane says.

Bruce clears his throat. “About that. Um. Steve is here, but he’s not exactly talking?”

“Not since the video, you mean?”

“Oh, right, you were the one who tipped Thor off about it, he said. Um,” Bruce says again.

Footsteps, and the scrape of a chair again. Carol’s voice. “Want to sit down, Jane?”

“Oh, yes, please.” A quiet groan. A yawn. “Excuse me. Been pulling a lot of late nights. Good skies at night, you know? I’ve been lugging my telescope everywhere.”

“Thor?” Bruce asks.

“Oh, he helps when he can. But he’s like you guys, getting ready for exams and stuff. Can’t expect him to drop his studies for me. Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“You’re being very reasonable about this,” Carol says.

“I have to be,” Jane says. “Besides, it’s just another year. After graduation, well, we’ll see.” And then, she says, “Is that Steve?”

“Yeah,” Bruce says. “You want us to clear out? So you can talk to Steve?”

“Oh, no, not at all, I don’t want to bother you.”

“Okay.” The springs on Bruce’s bed creak several times.

“Steve, hi,” Jane says. “In just the past couple of weeks I found out we had something in common. Can I just say, you were really awesome in the videos. I wish I could have watched the whole thing happen.”

Steve sighs, and tries to answer. “If it hadn’t been for those videos maybe I wouldn’t be in a state like this. I don’t know.”

“Steve,” Carol says.

“Okay, maybe you do need to kind of leave us alone now,” Jane says. “I offer myself as an almost entirely neutral party. And I’m definitely not part of your normal circle. Maybe I can be objective.”

“...She’s got a point - she’s more objective than I am, anyway. Come on, Carol,” Bruce says. “Steve? If you feel better, let us know - we can have dinner, or something. Those awful pizzas you like so much. My treat.”

Steve sits up, struggling with the bear and the blankets. “Bruce?”

“Yeah, Steve.”

Steve takes a deep breath. “You’re a good person. You’re a good friend. I don’t know why we’re friends, actually. I don’t even know why you came to watch my audition.”

His bed creaks as Bruce sits down next to him, as Bruce wraps his warm hand around Steve’s arm. “I came to watch your audition because you sounded seriously fucking good. As to why we’re friends, well. We’re friends because you talked me off a ledge two years ago, and sat next to me while I suffered through the consequences of that ledge. Not that there’re favors owed between us, but, yeah. My turn, right, even if I’m not gonna do the actual talking.”

He watches Bruce and Carol go. “I can take you to Natasha if you need to be with her right now,” Carol offers.

“Nah, you can’t do that. If Thor’s busy with exam prep, then so is she. You’ll do,” Bruce says, and that makes Carol laugh.

When the door closes on them, Steve is left staring at Jane. “Sorry. Not a good person to be around right now.”

“I know. But like I said. I’m here to be the neutral observer.”

“You said almost neutral, earlier.”

“Because I’m into De Corday like you, of course,” Jane says. “Maybe more than you. I’m actually in the official fan club. I’m sort of treasurer. We haven’t actually pinned that bit down yet.”

“Okay.”

“So you don’t have to explain De Corday to me. Though if you _do_ want to gush, I mean, absolutely you should. I’m all ears.”

Steve makes himself laugh at that. It’s a cold kind of laugh, the kind that scrapes at his throat. “Not sure I’d still have the right to gush, to be a fan, or anything like that. After all, I kicked Bucky Barnes out of this very dorm room.”

“He was here?” Jane asks. Calm. Encouraging.

“Yeah.” Steve pours out the story. “You’d be, what, the third person to hear this directly from me. I told Natasha, which is almost the same thing as telling Bruce, which is how the others know. I told Professor Erskine, and that is how that Vivaldi thing got made. Now you. I guess you don’t mind me asking a rude question.”

She flaps her hand. “Ask away.”

“What’s going to happen, now that I’ve told you?”

Jane seems to think that over. “Well, I don’t reasonably think anything can happen to you as a direct result of me being here. I’m just - me, you know? And I’m talking to someone who understands one thing I like. I’m assuming, I’m assuming, you can jump on me for that in a few minutes if you like. Just, let me finish okay?”

“Okay.” Steve retrieves the teddy bear from his blankets.

He can see Jane’s eyebrows hitch up towards her hairline. “I’ve seen a bear like that before - ”

“The bears are from here,” Steve says. “Darcy Lewis made them. She volunteers with the chamber orchestra. She’s a fan, too.”

“Obviously,” Jane says, warmly. “Now that you mention it I can see the similarities with the De Corday bears. Did you know they took photos?”

Steve watches her fiddle with her tablet, though it seems to be a struggle to just pull it out of the bag she’s carrying in the first place. “Ah, here we are. And here are the photos I’m talking about.” She turns the tablet around to face him.

Melinda May at a small table, with teacups and small plates and egg tarts and the solemn gaze of her domino-masked bear.

Bobbi Morse sitting on a pile of pillows and holding a pair of tiny yellow goggles up to her own eyes. The goggles are of a size that _could_ fit the bear sitting next to her.

Peggy Carter standing in what looks like a stiff breeze, if the hair blowing across her face is anything to go by. She’s wearing an oversized coat with very large front pockets, one of which is occupied by a bear in a red dress.

Even Phil Coulson has had a photograph taken with his counterpart bear. He’s leaning on a desk and he’s talking on his mobile phone, and his bear is sitting on the desk, at his computer.

When Steve gets to the photo of Bucky Barnes and his bear he has a terrible urge to dive back into the covers.

Bucky Barnes is standing with his back to the camera. He’s holding his teddy bear on his shoulder. The two of them are looking in the windows of a shop that sells musical instruments, including, front and center, a grouping of violins.

“I was wondering what that was all about,” Jane says, very gently. “I guess things make sense now.”

“Why violins?” Steve asks.

“Why not violins?” Jane asks. “He might have some good thoughts about them.”

“Is he supposed to have good thoughts about them? About me?”

“I don’t know. You could ask him.”

Steve shakes his head. “Even if I knew what to say, how would I do that?”

Jane smiles, then. “I did tell you I’m in the official fan club....”

///

“Gin and tonic,” Peggy says, firmly, and the bartender nods, and looks like he approves.

“Make that two.” Bucky groans when he manages to lever himself onto the bar stool. Hushed music trails off as the door he’d come in through swings closed once again.

“You’ve been working too hard.”

“Is the thing that we do actually work?” He knuckles the small of his back. There’s a knot there that’s been there for a while. It has a bad tendency to come back even after he’s had a massage. Bucky thinks it might have something to do with the way he sleeps, or he could have picked it up from when he was sleeping on sidewalks, and he can’t do anything about that.

A raised eyebrow, a half-scolding look. “You know what I mean.”

“Not really, I don’t,” Bucky says. The gin and tonics arrive, and he passes Peggy her glass, and drains half of his with the first swallow. Cold sharp on his tongue. “Please elaborate.”

“Is there a reason,” Peggy says once she’s done sucking on the wedge of lime that was perched on the rim of her glass, “why you’re forcing yourself to write songs? I thought you worked better if you took your time. There’s no reason for you to be rushing headlong into things. We are on a fairly lenient contract, as it turns out.”

“Maybe I just want to be working,” Bucky says, contemplating the bottom of his glass. “Maybe I can’t stand the idea of free time right now.”

Her hand lands on his arm, then, and he’s tempted to shake her off. He doesn’t. “Still tied up over that video?”

“Over Steve,” he corrects her. He gives in because he has to. Because he trusts her. “He didn’t seem to be involved in the rest of the video. Just the music.”

“It only means that his mentor wanted to make that apology personally to you.”

“And if it means Steve doesn’t want anything else to do with me?”

“You can’t know that. Not unless you speak to him. Actually speak to him, Bucky, not just - ” She waves her hand, a little vaguely. “Not just stare at him, or mumble, or something.”

Bucky cocks his head at her. “When have you ever known me to mumble?”

“When you’re talking to people you’re not entirely fond of? The press, for instance?”

“I’m allowed to not like the press, Peggy, we don’t entirely have a good relationship.” He’s never going to forgive the bloggers and the paparazzi for the not-very-subtle attempts at slut-shaming the very woman he’s pouring his heart out to. What Peggy does in her spare time and with whom are no one’s business but hers. Anyone who thinks otherwise is someone Bucky’d introduce to his fists.

“Which I concede is partly their problem as well as partly yours. But we’re not talking about them,” Peggy says. “We’re talking about you and Steve. Which, you might as well start by telling me - what is it with you and him? You can skip the part where you tell me you’re attracted to him. We all know that.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “Am I talking to just you or am I talking to you representing the others?”

“That would be telling.” Peggy waves for another round. “More gin and tonic?”

Bucky thinks about it. He shakes his head. “I should probably be sober for this part of the discussion.”

“Wise.” Peggy takes a sip of her drink. “Now, please, talk to me.”

“You tell me I can skip the part where I’m attracted to him, but you don’t know why that even happened,” Bucky says, after a moment. “Maybe it’s just me, okay, but - the first time I saw that video, with the rest of you crammed in around me, I didn’t want to know what Steve was performing, I was actually a little embarrassed he was covering ‘Labyrinthine’ - of all the things - ”

Peggy makes a face at him, and Bucky doesn’t make the face back, because he’s trying to put his words together. “I wanted to know what made him tick. What drove him into music. Which, okay, now I know something about it, because apparently that professor of his has pretty much everything to do with it. But - Peggy, have you ever looked at someone doing what they do and what they love and wanted to jump right in after them, regardless of whether you could do it or not, regardless of whether _you_ yourself were going to enjoy it? I mean, doing it because you wanted to see the absolute _joy_ in that person’s face. The absolute _wonder_. I - it’s like that for me, and it only got worse when I saw him actually being a good guy, at the coffee shop - ”

“Coffee shop?” Peggy asks.

“He bought random people coffee at a coffee shop in Kings just because he was going to get to use Professor Erskine’s violin. And I was one of those random people. Just, who does that?” Then he looks up at the bartender and says, “Okay, I’m done talking, I don’t want to be sober now, can you give me two gin and tonics?”

He downs the first one as quickly as he can, almost relishing the burn in his throat, and only after he’s done coughing and swallowing does he look at Peggy again.

Her lips are pressed together into a tight line, and she’s frowning, just, but she seems more worried than angry or anything else. “So you’re telling me that - that you want him because he seems to live very much in his moment.”

Bucky nods. “That was - concise.”

“It fits with what I have seen of him. Which I admit is not much. I only have a little less to go on than you do. But I, too, have seen how he plays.” There’s a soft rustle as Peggy pulls a silver cigarette case from her pocket. “Come on.” 

“Balcony’s that way, ma’am,” the bartender says.

“You want to?” Peggy asks.

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Bucky says, and he takes his drink with him and fumbles in his pockets for the lighter he often carries. He quit smoking a long time ago - and secondhand smoke still does funny things to his voice now - but he likes being useful, likes to use the lighter to help others, if he can, even if it’s just a little social transaction like lighting a cigarette.

There’s a stiff breeze blowing up on the balcony, and he puts his free arm around her shoulders, and she uses both hands to cup the shivering flame just long enough to catch on her cigarette.

“In fact,” Peggy says, after a few moments of silence, “Steve Rogers reminds me a little bit of you, when you play.”

“Yeah?” Bucky asks.

“Yes. It was the thing that struck me, when I watched the videos we’d made at Stephen Hall. You both move into the music, and with it. You fall into it. He does something much the same. Ask the others. It was Phil who first pointed it out, actually.”

“So you _have_ been talking about me behind my back.”

That gets him the stink-eye. “We’re worried about you, in case you never noticed - ”

“I know, Pegs, I know, I’m sorry, I’m being flippant because I don’t honestly know what to do.”

He glances over as Peggy tugs on his sleeve, and she looks like she’s about to say something, but a tinny chime flies up from his pocket and Bucky has to blink, and shrug at her, and pull his phone out. A wreath of blue light on her visible cheekbone.

“The fan club?” Peggy asks. “Oh. Were we supposed to be doing something with them, or for them?”

He shakes his head, and swipes at the screen, and all that comes up is an email. He’s familiar with the sender. “It’s Jane Foster,” he tells Peggy.

She nods and grins and pokes him in the ribs and he thinks about complaining, but he doesn’t want to move away either. “Ah, yes. I wonder what she’s going to organize for your birthday next year. She’s already done that charity challenge thing, hasn’t she?”

He nods, and opens the email.

_Hello Bucky. This is actually not, you know, official fan club business or anything. But I have a friend who wanted to get a message to you, and I was more than happy to help him. - Jane Foster_

“Message?” Peggy asks.

He scrolls down.

_Dear Bucky Barnes, I don’t know if you’d be interested in reading this message, and you’d be entirely justified in ignoring this if it does manage to get to you. I did try to push you away, the last time we had a conversation, when you were only interested in looking after me and making sure I was okay. You were trying to be kind and I, well, I was a jerk to you in return. For that, I’m very sorry. I wasn’t myself, and you got caught in the blast, and I’m sorry. - Steve Rogers_

Bucky reads the message again, and then a third time.

“Straight to the point. I approve,” Peggy says, and then she stubs her cigarette carefully out on a nearby ashtray, before heading back inside.

A few lines at the end of the message: a phone number. An email address.

///

He’s alone for once in his dorm room when his phone chimes to indicate a new email coming in.

The chime freezes Steve cold where he’s perched at the foot of his bed. Pages of sheet music strewn across the bed. Tchaikovsky, six minutes, with a lot of bright rapid-fire passages. His exams are over, and he has permission to stay in the dorms for another two weeks. He has a little time to spend on something as sprightly and entirely frivolous as this: a personal challenge, just to know if he can, just to know if he knows this kind of waltz.

He doesn’t have an orchestra backing him up, though he thinks he might be able to talk Kate, at the very least, into playing this with him. Kate’s technical ability exceeds his by a more than fair margin, and she also has the enviable gift of being able to recall a score perfectly within moments of reading it for the first time, which was why she wasn’t looking at any sheet music during the shoot with De Corday.

Steve looks at his violin, at the music, but there are no answers forthcoming.

He’s been dreading looking at his email. There are grades to worry about and the results of some of his exams. Whatever crazy holiday trip Tony intends to round people up for this year. Steve’s been on one of those, and he swore afterwards that he would never, ever, ever do it again - and then he got roped back in on the very flimsy excuse that Kate needed some kind of responsible chaperone-type person to supervise her movements.

Carol and Kate have photos from that trip that Steve doesn’t want to think about, much less explain to anyone else.

There is one more reason why Steve doesn’t check his email very often. He tells himself there is no point in hoping for responses from people, or for one response from one person in particular. Emails can be conversations, true, but they can also be nothing more than just bulletins, and bulletins don’t have to be responded to, or even acknowledged.

He still shakes a little when he puts his bow back in the case for his violin and picks up his phone, and in the time between the first chime and now he gets a message from Thor, as well:

_I shall be hosting a small party of friends at my father’s house on Lake Michigan for a weekend; would you like to join us? Tony has, unfortunately, agreed to come...._

Steve types out a quick reply:

_You guys can throw me in the lake all you want, but no more body shots please._

_Naturally not,_ is the nearly instant reply from Thor. _It’s a pleasure to have your company, as always._

Steve smiles, because Thor knows where to get some really amazing steaks and burgers and sausages, and he’ll actually be happy to be on kitchen duty for the entire thing, since Bruce isn’t actually any good with a knife and neither Clint nor Natasha can be trusted around a fire.

There’s nothing else to say to Thor, however, and now he really does have to look at his email, and he swallows and hunches in on himself as he taps at his screen.

The email that he just received comes from an unfamiliar address; it’s not from the hospital, however, so at least it’s not about Professor Erskine, and that makes the bands around his chest loosen, if only slightly.

_Dear Steve Rogers,_

_I think I’ve been lucky in all this time that I’ve been doing the music thing, because I don’t actually have to be worried for any of the people who’ve worked with me. The day Phil actually has a fever that’ll drop him straight into bed is the day the world ends, and let’s not get started on how Bobbi has this magical ability to eat all the junk food without gaining a damn pound - there’s something unnatural about that, and I haven’t found out about it yet, and I intend to. Someday maybe._

_But. The point. Is that maybe I get freaking out over someone who’s important to you. It can kind of twist your head around in circles. I think I know that part, or I remember it, same difference. So - apology accepted._

_And now I still don’t know what else to talk to you about. Because I still want to talk to you. Although Melinda is looking over my shoulder right now and suggesting she cook for you, or at least get her mother to do so. (Mrs May is_ ace _in the kitchen, just so you know. You will never look at spring rolls the same way again after she’s made you an entire plateful.) Maybe we can start from that. What do you like to eat? I like egg tarts and sloppy joes and_ uni _, although not all at the same meal, please, because I don’t want to burst from overeating._

_Yours Bucky Barnes (can you just call me Bucky? can I just call you Steve?)_

He almost drops the phone several times while reading the email, and when he gets to the end he has a terrible urge to throw the device right out the window, because famous gorgeous talented people don’t talk to him like this - like they want to be his friend.

Bucky forgave him, and wants to talk to him, and wants to keep calling him by his first name.

He thinks about being very quietly and very briefly hysterical - but the thought is interrupted by the chime for another email.

_P. S. Bobbi also read this thing over my shoulder - I really need to tell them all off for being such snoops, or maybe I’ll take them out to dinner instead, got suggestions? - and said something about maybe Skype or something like that. I have no idea if that’ll work for you, or if Skype is on the list of online things you don’t do. Here’s my username anyway._

Steve carefully stretches to put his phone back on his nightstand, and then he bends over so his head’s between his knees, and he makes himself take a deep breath, and another.

He also makes himself reach for the cup of water that’s been sitting atop his desk all day, and he drinks it dry, despite the dusty taste and the fact that there wasn’t much in the cup to begin with.

Then he retrieves his phone and looks at his email, and the messages from Bucky are still there.

So, apparently, things like that do happen.

Was it really supposed to be that easy?

Steve closes his eyes and thinks about luck, and about lucky breaks, and about conquering one complicated waltz and starting immediately on another, and then he might be steady enough to start typing back:

_Dear Bucky, I do use Skype from time to time, and I really wish it were an option, but I have a crappy and cranky laptop. (It chokes on Youtube on a daily basis. My friends are begging me to let them buy me a new machine. Do you think I should let them? (Is that a question I should ask you?))_

_And, um, thank you. For this._

_I like cheeseburgers. I’ve been invited to Thor’s dad’s lake house for a weekend. Long weekend. Something. We’re going to be grilling stuff. I’ll have to remember to bring my own cheese and keep it close, or Carol will eat all of it and not leave me any. I like breakfast burritos. I don’t make them, though; I just buy them from one of the cafeterias. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, Tony will buy the chamber orchestra pizza...._

///

Bucky wakes up to rapidfire clicking and a series of extremely familiar beeps and boops, and his blood runs cold.

He doesn’t bother to get out from the covers, though he does have to raise his voice in order to make sure that he gets heard: “Do you really have to do that here?”

The voice that answers him is cool and calm as it always is, and normally that would be soothing, but right now it’s just - entirely unexpected. Especially when it’s coming right from the foot of his bed. “I got kicked out, so.”

“So you’re inflicting yourself on me,” Bucky groans.

A quiet snort. Even that sounds dignified. “I am most certainly not inflicting myself upon you,” Phil Coulson says. “I am merely sitting on your bed. Though I must admit, I’m on a very tricky level. Could I ask you for a little quiet while I work on this?”

Bucky groans, and flips Phil off from under the covers.

After a particularly loud BOOP and the resulting resigned sigh, Bucky growls and throws off the blankets and struggles to get out of his warm bed. It’s not entirely a graceful exit and he knows it, but at least he doesn’t fall flat on his face on the way to the bathroom.

(There is a photograph in a password-locked folder on his mobile phone. It is a photograph of Peggy Carter, pancaked onto a carpeted floor. Vivid red bedhead, and several stray strands covering her closed eyes. Because she landed face-up, he has absolutely no idea _how_ she fell over in the first place. He has not shared that photograph with anyone else, though the others have attempted to bribe him and reason with him and even threaten him.)

Even after he washes his face and brushes the morning yech off his teeth he still doesn’t feel human.

“I’ve brought food, help yourself,” Phil says as he hunches over his phone. He spares his left hand to point at the table next to the window. White sack next to two squat square boxes.

Bucky grunts his thanks. There’s a peanut butter milkshake in the white sack. The burgers are still blood-warm. Grease on his tongue, and mayo on his fingers.

When he’s finished with the first burger, he says, “If I asked you to go away would you?”

“No.”

“Are you here because - ”

Phil holds up a hand. Three fingers up.

Bucky rolls his eyes and gets to work on the second burger. It has cheese. He wonders, briefly, if Steve likes all kinds of cheeses or if he’s picky about what cheese he eats with what food. He hasn’t been able to pick up much from the brief exchange about - what? Grilling and Carol and a lake house?

He’s toying with the straw from his milkshake when Phil cackles quietly to himself and nods, and there’s a flash of rainbow-light on the ceiling.

“Thanks for waiting,” he says, pleasantly, when he sits down in the chair opposite.

Bucky rolls his eyes again. “I ate two of the burgers; if one of them was yours, tough shit. I was hungry.”

“Yeah, I guessed you’d be, which is why I ate mine before I came up. But hands off that strawberry milkshake.”

He waits until Phil’s had a drink before croaking, “So?”

“So.” Phil shrugs and raises an eyebrow at him. “I got an interesting message from Bobbi. It came with a rather large attachment.”

Bucky groans and puts his hands in his hair, and only by sheer willpower does he swallow the urge to tear it out. “So she ratted me out and now you’re gonna kick my ass because it’s a terrible song, because it’s very high-school-please-notice-me and shit - ”

“Shut the fuck up, Bucky,” Phil says, and how he manages to make the words sound _fond_ Bucky really doesn’t know.

“You listened to it,” Bucky says anyway.

“I haven’t. And don’t think that just because you’re putting yourself down that I’ll actually pay attention to you and not listen to it.”

“Ugh, just - go on and listen to it and kick my ass so we can move on to the next topic, please.”

And he watches Phil tap around on his phone with a sinking feeling in his stomach that might not be the burgers he just ate.

Then, the soft strains of Bobbi’s guitar, followed by his words, half-growled and half-sung.

At the end, there’s a brief tag: Bobbi’s voice, saying, “That was ‘Stephen Hall’. Music and lyrics by Bucky Barnes.”

“Do I want to know where that came from?” Phil asks around a long slurp of strawberry milkshake.

“Like you don’t already know?” Bucky counters. “Or are you losing your touch? It’d be kind of weird if your weird mind-reading skills just _died_ on this song. Should I be proud of myself or something?”

“You’re certainly referring to something or someone specific with a song called ‘Stephen Hall’.”

“And now you want to know why even,” Bucky says, stretching in his chair. Something sharp twinges in his ribs.

“You should tell me that only if you really want to.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I wanted to know if you were planning to do anything else with it,” Phil says. “More instruments? A full studio version? You should ask Melinda for her opinion on a drum break or two, maybe at the end. Or, how about recording it on a proper piano? I’m pretty sure I can find one for you to play on while we’re here, unless you’d really rather do it at your place.”

Bucky stares at Phil for a moment, dry-mouthed with surprise, and he has to swallow a few times before he can speak. “You’re not going to beat me up over that song?”

That gets him a wry complicated eyebrow tic. “No. What the hell were you expecting?”

“I actually have no fucking idea,” Bucky says, scratching the back of his head.

Phil shakes his head. “I don’t get it. So the others told me about what you’ve been doing, and you’re expecting - what exactly? How is it that you still haven’t gotten the hang of us?”

Bucky opens his mouth, but no sound comes out.

Phil raises an eyebrow at him again, and he changes the question: “So you’re gonna let me go out on stage and sing this song?”

“Yes. It sounds good. There is something raw and real in it. So why not?”

He could laugh about this or cry about this or - well, it wouldn’t actually be possible for him to kick Phil out of the room - and Bucky settles for shaking his head and saying, “And if I put this on the next album and that album goes into the shitter you’re gonna lay into me for, I don’t know, depriving you of new suits or something.”

“I’ll do something worse,” Phil says, back to his puzzle game, and Bucky doesn’t question him at all.

He does start laughing, though, softly at first, then louder and louder, until he really can’t stop himself from shaking any more, until he has to bang his fist on the table, and briefly he thinks about the look on Steve’s face when he hears the song for the first time, and the bootlegs start circulating -

He resolves right there and then that he isn’t going to tell Steve about the song. It’ll be a surprise.

///

The only warning Steve has is a quiet “Uh-oh” from somewhere on his left - and then he’s jolted violently up and down, enough that he’s stupidly glad his seat belt is still working or he might have pitched straight into the glove box.

“Sorry, sorry, Jesus _fuck_ I never saw that coming,” Clint mutters. He’s hunched over the steering wheel, and even in the bad light of early morning and his ears ringing from impact Steve can see the blush creeping up into Clint’s hairline.

“Everyone okay up there,” Bruce asks from somewhere in the back of the van. He sounds kind of like a broken cello, and kind of like he’s seen a parade of ghosts.

“Forget about Clint,” Tony hollers from right behind Steve, making him jump for the second time in a minute, “is the _food_ okay?” The next thing he says is “Ow!”

“Clint, kindly warn us you’re about to drive into a ditch next time, please and thank you,” Natasha says.

“I actually fucking hit my head on the ceiling,” Carol grouses, and Steve looks over his shoulder at various disgruntled faces.

“Wanna switch?” he asks Clint.

“Nope. They can’t kill me so long as I’m driving,” is the truculent reply.

“You’re gonna kill us _with_ your driving, buddy,” Tony says. “At least Steve’s only problem is that he might get us lost.”

“Whatever, are we there yet?” Kate says.

Steve shakes his head, and tries to get comfortable again, and in that moment his phone buzzes at him and the message is from Bucky.

_I’ll be a little busy over the next couple of days so I gotta keep this one short. Big gig coming up. Like, this is kind of our hometown thing, I dunno if a band like ours can actually get to claim a hometown given we’re from all over the place, but, you know, it’s Brooklyn, baby. I was born there, and De Corday got sort of its start there, too. If you’re somewhere with a good Internet connection maybe you and your friends could tune in, since it’s being livestreamed or some such shit like that._

_I’d especially like it if you could check the concert out on Saturday night. We might be doing something we’ve never actually done before._

Steve tunes the others out as they start bickering.

_I’m not exactly at home either this weekend, for a given value of “home” and therefore “not at home”. I think I told you about Thor’s dad’s lake house at some point, so we’re driving up there right now. What I mean is, we were supposed to leave this morning. We actually left Kings before midnight last night, which is ridiculous, and I know it’s kind of way too early but guess what, my friends are overcaffeinated, and now I’m stuck here and I must be the only sane person in the bunch. (We just might have survived an accident, I don’t know yet.) I suppose it’ll be a miracle if I come back to Kings and I’m not in traction or something._

_I don’t know if there’ll be wi-fi at Thor’s dad’s place, but then again Tony’s coming on this trip, and he can’t live without an Internet connection so I’ll try to find a spot where Carol and I, and possibly Kate if she’s interested, can listen to you guys. You guys planning anything special for your hometown?_

“Wow,” someone says behind him, and Steve looks up, and can’t help but grin.

Flat landscape and the speeding lights of slower and faster cars. The triangular shape of a sharply slanted roof in the distance, far away enough that he can’t tell what the actual building is supposed to be, but Steve imagines a barn, or perhaps an oversized stable of some kind, if the quiescent tilled fields are any indication.

But even that barn is a minor distraction compared to the slowly brightening sky and the towering ranges of dark clouds, to the bright golden rays heralding the coming sunrise, to the oncoming promise of a clear crisp day.

Steve blinks when someone starts humming, sweet sonorous powerful, and the lilt of it makes the hairs on the back of his head rise.

“Nat,” Clint says, and Steve catches him as he glances into the rearview mirror, eyes briefly flaring wide open.

Steve rests his head against the back of his chair, and closes his eyes, and takes the rising notes in. A canticle from Morning Prayer. He’s heard her sing over and over again, and he’s heard her sing all kinds of songs, and he will never get over the way she sings. Her voice demands attention, demands a singular focus, the same kind of focus she brings to bear on a score.

It’s Steve’s turn to look briefly into the mirror when he hears someone take in a deep and startled breath; he catches Natasha as she moves to capture both of Bruce’s hands, and the end result is that he’s holding her loosely and she’s leaning partly into him and even that doesn’t seem to affect the power of her song at all.

Steve smiles, and starts writing an addendum to the latest message for Bucky: _You guys put out music that’s great for driving to - like open all the windows and blast the music at full volume - but I also have a friend named Natasha, and if you could hear her right now, you’d probably feel like I do and be grateful that you’re already sitting down because she has a voice that could make you fall down. In a good way._

As he sends the message, Clint checks his phone - currently plugged into the dashboard and serving as a GPS device - and accelerates, briefly, before turning off the highway and around the long sweeping curve of an interchange. Soon they’re driving between more fields and the first appearances of farm machinery, and Steve imagines the low purring throb of their engines as bass chords on long sustains.

Natasha’s song tails off, and Steve joins the others as they give her a round of applause, and Kate says, “So tell me why you aren’t making any plans to record a fucking album?”

That makes Natasha laugh quietly. “And what am I going to sing?”

“Anything you want!”

“I don’t think it would make sense to put Evensong and, hmm, ‘Bad Romance’ on the same album.”

“Says who?” And that’s Carol, laughing, and Steve grins and shakes his head and raises his eyebrows at Clint when he snorts in disbelief.

“What, Barton, you don’t agree?” Carol hoots.

“I plead the Fifth,” Clint says.

Tony boos, and so does Kate, and Clint flips them both off.

The sun’s already well on its way when Steve catches the first glimpse of rippling water, Lake Michigan seemingly quiescent in the distance, and as soon as he can see the shoreline he takes a photograph and sends it to Professor Erskine. _Wish you were here,_ is the caption.

 _Thank you for thinking of me,_ is the reply. _Now off you go and enjoy yourself. Try to make sure the others don’t get into too much trouble._

 _Little late for that,_ Steve sends, and then Clint is pulling into a long left-hand turn of a driveway and they’re almost at the lake house, and the others are starting to argue about who has to carry what out of the van.

Steve rolls down his window and waves at Thor as he steps out of the front door, and Thor’s shout of “Welcome!” echoes off the surrounding trees.

“Oh god finally,” Tony says as he hops out of the van and knuckles the small of his back. “Just a thought, Barton: can someone else drive next time?”

“I nominate Steve,” Kate says.

Clint makes ugly faces at them both, and gets out and strides over to Thor, and offers him a fist-bump. “I always forget that when you say ‘lake house’ I’m supposed to think of something like, I dunno, Jane Austen? Don’t the houses in her books have names?”

“We do not have a particular name for this house,” is Thor’s reply.

“You should give it one, if only because it has to put up with us,” Clint says.

“Hi, Thor,” Steve says when he’s done helping with the coolers of food stacked in the back of the van. “Hi, Jane,” he adds, when Jane Foster sticks her head out of a second-storey window.

“Hello, Steve,” Jane calls around a yawn. “Excuse me. I’m not sure I’m awake yet.”

“Yeah, well, it’s just us,” Steve tells her with a grin. “Don’t let us interrupt. You need to rest.”

“So Thor tells me. I’ll be right down. We can talk about the Brooklyn gig.”

Steve grins, and leaves Tony to unloading, and by the time he finds the kitchen there’s coffee on and Jane has scrounged up the leftovers from the previous night and Steve is once again reminded that Thor is just as talented in the kitchen as he is on stage.

“Try the upside-down cake,” Jane offers. “I didn’t think it would be a good idea to put peaches on that, but - trust Thor, right?”

Steve nods. Around a mouthful of cold pizza he asks, “Why aren’t _you_ at this gig?”

A shrug. “Thor asked first, so. I did get a couple of tickets. But since I couldn’t make it I just gave them away. There are people in the club who’ve never been to a De Corday concert. I was happy to enable them. I’ll just go to the next one.” Jane pours another cup of coffee. “I might regret missing tonight, though. I’ve heard rumors about the band doing something weird or special or something.”

“Something?” Steve asks.

“I got nothing, same as you,” Jane says.

“Now that’s something I didn’t think I’d ever hear you say,” Natasha says as she steps into the kitchen.

Steve immediately gets up to relieve her of three duffel bags. “What the hell’s in these anyway?”

“Tony’s idea of snacks,” Natasha says, holding up a silver pouch.

“Oooh, trail mix,” Jane says. “Is it the kind with no raisins in?” 

“Tony hates raisins. How are you with blueberries?” 

Jane grins. “Gimme.”

The others bustle in, and Steve finds himself in the middle of several conversations at once, and there is a part of him that wishes he were in Brooklyn right now, because these are his friends and someone he knows is going to be headlining a big concert, and that concert is on the East Coast, where he is not.

“Steve, talk to me about this thing I heard De Corday might be doing,” Carol says, and he offers her a bite of upside-down cake and he’s going to have to speculate, because Bucky hasn’t given him any details, and he can’t help but be excited, and he can’t help but wonder.

///

“You’re up,” Melinda says, and Bucky makes a face at her as she steps gracefully out of the makeup chair. “What? Still not used to someone putting your face on for you?”

“I can do my own damn makeup,” Bucky grouses, but only half-heartedly. He’s still walking with a little bit of a spring in his step. A few years ago he was someone no one on the streets would look at twice; now he’s got a journalist named Ororo Munroe telling him that she’s rooting for him and for De Corday.

“I’ll admit your raccoon eyes can be charming,” Bobbi says when she walks in, “but I don’t think it’d be a good look for only one of the biggest concerts we’ll ever do.”

“If he won’t let a professional do it,” Peggy adds from outside the door, “I can, since I’ve steadier hands.”

Bucky growls and throws up his hands. “Did no one hear me? I said I’d do it myself - ”

“How about you start and I’ll finish?” the makeup artist asks. She’s a tiny thing, only barely coming up to Bucky’s shoulders, and she has a far larger presence than the quiet voice and the small hands might imply.

Though he supposes the bright pink hair might have something to do with that.

“How about it?” the makeup artist asks, and she’s looking at him in the mirror. There’s a small black palette in her hand, matte black plastic. “You can give me guidelines or something like them, and I’ll do my best to do your look properly.”

“He has a look?” Melinda and Bobbi say in chorus, and they’re both grinning, and Bucky pretends to smack them on the backs of their heads as he reluctantly approaches the mirrors.

“Ignore them, please,” the makeup artist says. “Show me what you have in mind?”

His hands are steady as he uses an eyeliner pencil to draw a mask around his eyes.

The makeup artist tilts her head at him when he’s done. “You sure you want to do, like, the superhero thing? Or is that a bank robber look, I can never tell.”

Bucky scowls at her, and at the giggling in the background, and as far as he can tell the others are getting dressed, and as much as he wants to get up in their faces and snark right back he can’t, because the makeup artist is coming at him with a brush and he has to close his eyes on instinct.

“May I suggest something else?” the makeup artist asks.

Bucky shrugs, and gives in with ill grace, and he wants to apologize as soon as the surly “Do what you want” leaves his lips.

After several minutes of tapping and muttering and, once, a startlingly cold damp swipe across his forehead, she says, “Okay, open up,” and Bucky does, and he feels his jaw drop.

He normally wears eyeliner on stage, and he smudges it haphazardly so he looks the same at the beginning and at the end of the performance, and what he’s looking at now is subtly different from that.

Instead of a domino mask the makeup artist has given him something else in black and very blue, a neat rectangular shape encompassing both eyes. Bright silver lines winging almost to his temples. “Most of that should stay in place,” she explains, “and you’ll need to use something rather strong to clean it all off later. I hope that’s okay.”

“You’re not expecting me to sing ‘Nightswimming’, are you?” Bucky asks, but he’s grinning as he says it, and somewhat to his surprise the background of laughter and quiet jeering has faded away.

“Awww, I thought you guys took requests,” the makeup artist says, and she pouts for all of a few seconds before flashing him a grin. “Okay, so, yeah, you currently look a little bit like Michael Stipe, if Michael Stipe had long hair. But I don’t think he’d mind, and I really think you don’t.”

“Nope, I don’t - it looks pretty good, actually,” and Bucky squints at the blue and thinks of Steve’s eyes, both darker and brighter than what he’s currently wearing. “Can you teach me how to do it?”

“I can teach you, but it’s less technique and more the makeup you pick: you have to get these,” and she shows him a few things from her extensive kit. “You use this color and this color with these brushes. Pretty idiot-proof.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says.

“Don’t mention it.” A sunny smile. “It’ll look good on my CV, you know, I got you to look that nice for the Beacon.”

“I’ll ask Phil to put in a good word for you.” And Bucky hops out of the chair, strides past the others, meets Peggy’s raised eyebrow with one of his own.

Getting dressed is getting dressed, he thinks, and he remembers wearing a freshly pressed but fairly unremarkable dark t-shirt over faded jeans to Kings, to Stephen Hall. Nothing really memorable about that outfit; the whole idea had been to think about the band performing in a place that was mostly different from a concert stage, and for those performances to be caught on camera, mostly live, mostly unplugged.

Onstage at the Beacon Theatre will be a little bit different, Bucky thinks, and they’ve all bowed to the wisdom of slight exaggeration: they need to be a little bit larger-than-life for this one, because there will never be another first time onstage at the Beacon.

Next to the first time he’d ever played a song with Peggy and Melinda and Bobbi, the four of them looking up breathlessly from a twenty-minute jam that had started with Led Zeppelin and ended somewhere between Sting and the Police and the Foo Fighters, tonight and tomorrow night will be something of a highlight in Bucky’s career - in his life - and he understands the logic of dressing for the occasion.

White shirt with a button-up collar and very abbreviated sleeves, butter-soft and, if he stands at a certain angle, mostly translucent; he has no idea where Bobbi even got it, but she has a knack for things like a pair of yellow goggles, so he’ll trust her judgment on this one. A good pair of black jeans, not entirely new; it’s ripped up a little at the knees and at the hems, though not so much that he’d trip over the trailing ends. He performs barefoot when they’re recording, but he can’t do that on stage, what with all the cables and the rough planking, so he puts on his best boots, the ones he usually goes dancing in, when Peggy’s in the mood for dancing.

There’s nothing much to do for his hair except comb it back neatly. It’ll all fall into his face again anyway when he starts headbanging, which is something he does at least once per gig.

A quiet sound behind him, someone clearing her throat, and he looks in the full-length mirror and smiles. Hasn’t he just been thinking of Peggy? Because there she is, and now he knows why she’d had her hair covered while he was getting his face done, because her hair’s turned into a beautiful explosion of curls, enough that when she passes beneath one of the overhead light she looks like she’s got some kind of riotous halo on.

Her feet make a clumping noise much like his, and he looks down and sees the chunky boots she’s wearing, and he pretends to make a frame with his hands to catch every detail of her minidress, tiny white polka dots on deep dark red like good wine.

“Flatterer,” she says, smiling fondly as she reaches up to his head, and Bucky bows and closes his eyes and he feels her fingers carding through his hair. As firm a touch as she’s ever applied to music, when she’s flowing into the rhythm as she works over a keyboard. “And, incidentally, the only guy I’d rather have watching my back. Onstage or off it.”

Bucky smiles. “We haven’t gotten into any bar brawls lately; don’t tell me you miss it.”

“Then I won’t,” she says, and that makes him groan, and then he laughs quietly and shakes his head and he steps forward to hug her.

“We’re here,” he says, and he’s still steady, though he doesn’t know how. “Big stage. First time.”

“First of many.”

“You really think so?”

“It’s what I’m hoping for,” Peggy says, and she pulls back only far enough to kiss him lightly on his cheek - though she does kind of spoil things by frowning and rubbing at his skin. “Sorry. Lipstick. I think Steve won’t much like that.”

“And you mentioned him first, which means - what?” Bucky pulls away, gestures her towards the chair in the corner, but when she shakes her head he goes to sit down.

“Which means that I will be cheering you on from the sidelines when you do the thing you want to do tonight - or is it going to be tomorrow night? I can’t remember.” And Peggy looks amused and sincere at the same time, or perhaps it’s just the way she’s penciled in her eyebrows, with a roguish tilt that he’s become familiar with in the years of playing with her, scrabbling their way up through strange venues and hostile crowds and the haze of obscurity, all the way to running into Phil Coulson and everything that had followed.

“It has to be tonight,” Bucky says after a quick check of his inbox. No new emails. “Steve’s going to try to tune in later, if he actually manages to catch one of the livestreams.”

“We used to be such small fry we didn’t even rate a livestream,” she says. “Now we’re top of the bill. People yell the songs back at us. I know how I feel about that. You?”

He shakes his head, shuffles his feet. “I know it’s a big high, but - honestly, it can’t compare to what it feels like to finish a song. Or to present a new song to you guys and hear you play it with me for the first time.”

That gets him a small and real smile. “I think that’s the dream, and I think you want to hang on to that for as long as you can.”

He wants to respond to that, wants to say something, but there’s a knock on the door jamb and he looks up to see Bobbi leaning against the wall. He’s seen her wear jumpsuits before, khaki things that look very much like something a fighter pilot might wear into battle, and there are even ribbons on her chest that _might_ look like decorations, if only he hadn’t last seen them tied to her guitar.

There’s something about the jumpsuit and the neat bun at the top of her head that makes her look long and lean and ready to fight, and maybe that would be an apt metaphor, since he knows tonight’s audience might like them and also might turn on them if they make so much as the tiniest mistake.

“Is it pep talk time?” Bobbi asks. “Because if it is, I’m gonna go get Melinda.”

“I think it’d be more accurate to say that Bucky is pepping himself up for the pep talk,” Peggy says.

“Hey,” Bucky says, grinning, and he’d swat Peggy on the shoulder if only she weren’t so far away.

“Oh, okay,” Bobbi says, and she leans out the door anyway, and shouts, “Melinda, come on, Bucky’s about to throw up!”

“Coming,” and Melinda does sound sharp and amused and Bucky does go over to Bobbi and poke her hard in the shoulder.

When he attempts to do the same to Melinda, though, she fends him off with a Look. “Poke me and you are not getting any egg tarts.”

Bucky grins, and steps away, hands up and out in the open.

Melinda brushes past him, her hair smelling like sandalwood and the sweet rough burr of charcoal. Like him, she’s mostly missing her sleeves, though there’s a difference between his shirt and her ripped button-down, which is half-done over a tank top and short shorts and the type of shoes he usually sees on the protagonists of period martial arts movies, soft and soundless and snug.

She puts a small white box down on the arm of the chair. Eight paper cups and eight golden-yellow circles.

Peggy blinks at the box. “Where were you hiding the egg tarts?”

“I wasn’t hiding them,” Melinda says. “I made them before coming here and stashed some at home, and then I asked my brother to come deliver them tonight, since I figured - it might make us all feel ready.” She shrugs. “Assuming we’ll be able to eat and not - ” She mimes gagging.

“Egg tarts,” says a new voice, and Bucky sees Phil’s outstretched hand first before he sees the rest of him, and this is going to be one of the few times he ever sees the man a little less than absolutely composed. Phil’s collar’s a little skewed up under one ear, and while his tie is still mostly in place, what is visible of his cuffs is dusty and streaked with grime.

“Hey, Phil, don’t tell me you went and rewired our mics like you were threatening that sound guy you’d do,” Bobbi says.

“I asked that sound guy to, and I stood over him while he was doing it,” Phil says, and he accepts Bucky’s offer of a handkerchief, as well as two of Melinda’s egg tarts. One of the tarts disappears in two neat bites, and Phil mops his forehead and nods in thanks. “Phones?”

Bucky reaches for an egg tart and hands his mobile phone over, and so do the others, and Phil makes everything disappear into his pockets.

“Twenty minutes to showtime,” Peggy says, after a moment and a quick glance at the clock on the wall. “Are we actually here, and are we actually about to do this?”

Bucky licks the egg tart crumbs from his lips and motions the others in, and when Phil smiles and shrugs and shakes his head, as he always does, Bucky pulls him in by the sleeve of his jacket.

“If anyone wants to go first,” Bucky says, after a moment of looking at the others.

“I do,” Bobbi says, “and I just wanted to say, can someone take the lights off me when you guys go on break and I do the thing with Bucky, because I really don’t want to step on his moment - ”

“Oh, we’re talking about that?” Melinda asks, the corner of her mouth quirking briefly upward.

“We’re not,” Bucky tells them both, “because no one is taking any lights off anyone. That’s it. That’s all.”

“So you do plan for it to be a moment,” Phil says, very gently.

Bucky shrugs, nods, smiles. “I would like it to be a small moment. At the same time, I’m aware it’s new material. It _will_ get out there. We can’t exactly forbid people from recording what we’re doing tonight. I’m sorry, Phil, if it’s gonna cause problems for you.”

“We’ve already talked about this,” is the firm rejoinder. “Please don’t make me repeat myself.”

Bucky shrugs again. “Your call.” Another look at the others. “Anything else? Because the crew’s going to do one last sound check before they pull those curtains up, and after that tea party with the reporter I _really_ need to go potty - ”

“Bucky,” Peggy says, and he shuts up and almost takes a step back at the steel in her voice.

“Yeah?”

And, suddenly, she smiles. Wide and bright and powerful. “We’re going to be okay.”

Melinda nods, and smiles, too. “We’ve got you, and you’ve got us.”

Bobbi gives him two thumbs up. “And it’s going to be a really good night.”

He laughs, quietly, and starts nodding. “We’re going to kill them all out there, that’s all,” he says.

Later, when he steps up to the keyboard and the mic that have been set up just right of center stage, Bucky takes a deep breath, and the slowly building roar of the audience that is just on the other side of the curtain wraps around him, comforting and sharp at the same time, and there’s a steady countdown in his earpiece. 

Phil’s voice: “...three, two, and I just wanted to tell you that you are all amazing, _one_ , LIGHTS!”

And Bucky grins, brings his hands down hard on his keyboard, and the song flows from him, music and lyrics, to the screaming -

The opening bars of “Run and Howl”, and the others singing, sweet unearthly harmony, and Bucky throws his head back and yells, a long wordless cry - 

///

“Shit, shit, get it back,” Kate says, tugging on Steve’s arm. “I know that intro, they’re going to play that song - ”

Steve frowns and takes a step toward the window, and briefly the static coming up from the borrowed tablet dissolves into wave upon wave of ecstatic applause, the diffuse roar slowly turning into something more pounding, more driven, and underneath the precise and powerful drums, Melinda on a rampage - 

“You know what this one is,” Bucky growls, and even though he’s a long way away his voice seems to fill up the small room in which Steve is sitting, Kate and Carol tight up against him, the three of them bent towards the grainy screen in Steve’s hands.

“ _All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces, bright and early for the daily races,_ ” and Steve can’t help but join in. The words are as familiar to him as the calluses on his hands, as the scratch of a pen trailing greenish-black ink, and De Corday’s just one more entry on the list of performers who’ve covered “Mad World” but they’re likely to be the only ones who juxtapose it with a crashing rendition of the opening bars of “La Marseillaise”.

By the time the song’s in its final phrases Kate’s waving her fist to the inexorable rhythm, and Steve’s heart is pounding as though it’s trying to fight its way out of him, and the faint light from the tablet is illuminating the bright unshed tears in Carol’s eyes.

“Hey, guys, sorry about the lapse in the Internet connection, I may or may not have knocked over one of the amps,” Tony says at his usual way-too-fast clip, and Steve looks up sharply, mimes zipping his mouth shut.

That stops Tony from talking but doesn’t stop him from coming closer, and Steve moves reluctantly so that Tony can squeeze in next to Carol. Luckily “Mad World” is done and Bucky is pointing at Peggy with the mic in his hand, and she’s radiant and powerful under the bright stage lights.

And then Peggy steps out from behind her keyboard, and she sweeps the audience a bow, before she runs offstage, soon followed by a waving Melinda.

“If I live to be a hundred I will never be able to do that,” Kate says, admiringly.

“Play the keyboards?” Tony asks.

“Do my face like that. She’s like one of those wartime posters, you know, propaganda, Rosie the Riveter, she’s all made up to go dancing but she’s dressed to make a whole bunch of ginormous machines her bitches. She looks like she could kill you without breaking a fingernail.”

“You don’t have to dress up like her to kick ass,” Carol says. “You already do.”

Kate shrugs, and pokes Steve in the shoulder. “What’s going on? Why’d they leave? It’s too soon for the break.”

“They didn’t all leave,” Steve says, squinting at the tablet. 

A wooden bench has appeared just left of center stage, and Bucky waves to the crowd before sitting down on one end.

Bobbi takes the other end, and she fiddles with both the nearest mic stand and the ribbons tied to her guitar.

“What’s going on?” Tony asks.

“Hush,” Carol says.

Steve watches, riveted, as Bucky runs his free hand through his hair and holds on to a mic with the other. “Good evening, New York City,” he says, smiling, and the lights play out over the cheering crowd, lit here and there with stray bands and lines of color - glow sticks, like the components of a rainbow. “Hope you’re all having a good time.”

“Oh yeah,” Kate says.

“We’re really glad you could join us tonight,” Bucky continues after a quick and quiet conference with Bobbi, who moves back to her end of the bench after. “It’s a big thing for us to be able to play here at the Beacon for you guys. Anyone from Brooklyn around? Our old stomping grounds?” He mentions a few names, names that Steve recognizes from lists of De Corday performances, and with each name the crowd roars more and more enthusiastically.

“The Beacon,” Tony says, quietly, sounding a little awed. “That’s one hell of a venue. Small, but - wow. These guys are that important?”

“I think you’d say they were important if they went from zero to hero in four years. And they’re only going to keep getting bigger. Radio City Music Hall,” Carol says, “when they make it there I’m going, doesn’t matter what I’ll be doing, I’m buying tickets to De Corday when they get there.”

“I’ll go with you,” Kate says.

Steve’s hands are protesting with how tightly he’s holding on to the tablet, but he can’t let up, he can’t let go, because Bucky is saying, “So I don’t know what kinds of rumors you guys have been hearing about us, but - yeah, about that surprise we mentioned for tonight’s concert. Bobbi has very kindly agreed to indulge my silliness - ”

Amused catcalling from here and there in the crowd, and Bobbi leans toward her mic stand to say, “Don’t listen to a fucking word he says, this isn’t silliness, we’re actually about to do something awesome up here, so.”

“So, you see, there’s this song,” Bucky says, and he has to stop because his words are greeted with a huge roar of approval.

“Is he fucking serious, a new song?” Carol says, and then she jumps out and runs to the window and throws it wide open, and she shouts into the tree-lined night, “Jane Foster, you come up here and listen to this right now! I think De Corday’s surprise is a new song!”

A crash from below, followed by running, and Jane skids into the room, trailed by a bemused-looking Thor, who only says, “Why are all of you sitting in the dark?”

“Because we can’t see the screen otherwise, and there’s not much screen to begin with,” Tony says.

“Ah.” 

Jane crowds in next to Kate, just in time for Bucky to say, “Sometimes you write a song like you’re pulling it out of you, one word at a time, and sometimes it just gets dropped onto your head and it could knock you out if you’re not ready for it, and this song is both and neither and it’s called ‘Stephen Hall’.”

There’s a beat of silence, like the instant before the first measure of a melody, and Steve feels like he’s been dropped into ice.

Next to him, Jane says, “As in _Kings_?”

Bobbi starts playing, a run of strumming chords that only sounds simple, but she’s speeding up and the music rises, and the only lit spots onstage are the two ends of the bench. Light shining onto Bucky as he lifts the mic and starts to sing.

_I knew, I knew_  
_If I landed_  
_When I landed_  
_That you would be the death of me._  
_So I jumped_  
_And you, you never knew...._

Bucky sings with his eyes closed, and his is the only voice Steve can hear, as it fills the stage and the room and the spaces of him, and he vaguely feels it when Carol plucks the tablet from his hands and the Beacon is slowly starting to fill with rapturous applause.

Steve crosses to the open window, and now he can hear the shocked startled roar of his pulse in his ears, over and above the lingering strains of the new song as it starts over in his head.

Bucky had asked him to tune in tonight.

A short song, something entirely new, something no one has ever heard before.

A song called “Stephen Hall”.

“Are they really just gonna sit there?” Tony is asking, when Steve comes back to himself. “Is that how they really spend their set break?”

“Maybe it’s just for tonight,” Steve hears Jane say. “I don’t really know. They just did something totally new, and they’ve been around for a few years and they’ve never been onstage at the Beacon before.”

Steve misses his violin, suddenly, intensely, and he misses the passion of a De Corday song, coaxed into being by his hands, by a bow and a set of strings, and he pulls out his phone, thinks about pulling up the violin app, inadequate substitute but bearable for just a few seconds - 

And he’s not the only one who almost jumps out of his skin when the phone rings, but he must be the only one to yell, because there’s a familiar voice calling up to him from downstairs: Bruce. “Steve! Are you okay?”

Steve blinks, does his best to take in a deep breath, and he looks down at his blinking phone, down at Bruce and Natasha and a skeptical-looking Clint, and he says, “I have no idea who’s calling.”

“It’s not the hospital?”

“No, I’ve got Dr Wilson’s number saved, it’s not him.”

“Only way to find out is to answer,” Clint says.

Steve taps his phone, and holds it up to his ear. “Steve Rogers.”

“Hello, Steve, this is Phil Coulson.” 

Steve blinks, and says, because it’s the only thing he can think of that is neither a string of obscenities nor a plea for confirmation of what he’s just been listening to, “Is everyone in the band okay?”

A low murmur of a chuckle. “Very kind of you to ask. We might all just be reeling a little from the noise. I don’t know if you’re watching the concert - ”

“I am,” Steve says, quickly.

“Well, whatever it is you’re hearing on the livestream, multiply it by about a thousand and it might sound like what we’re hearing. I’m kind of thinking the ear plugs were useless.” Phil Coulson clears his throat. “I didn’t call you for small talk, though again, we appreciate your concern. Can you hold, please?”

“Then why’d you call me,” Steve starts.

And the next words he hears are _not_ spoken by Phil Coulson. “I asked him to,” Bucky Barnes says, and his voice sounds worn down and blown out, and he also sounds like he might be laughing, like he might be softly breathless, like he might be a little bit overwhelmed. “How’d you like the song?” 

“I - Bucky,” Steve begins, suddenly aware that almost everyone in the house is staring at him, is listening in. 

He turns his back on them, looks up into the tree-framed night sky, up at distant stars. “I liked it very much.”

Bucky laughs, though it’s cut short by a brief coughing fit.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks.

“I’ve fucking lost my voice, and I still have a few more songs to sing. And then there’s tomorrow. Don’t wanna think about it.”

“Oh.”

“Why’d you like the song?”

Steve remembers Carol’s words from a clarinet-and-violin-and-De-Corday melee, and says, “The singer - you - the singer jumps and falls and probably knew what was going to happen going in, and chose to jump anyway.”

“I did,” Bucky says, easily.

“Asking a lot of hard questions along the way.”

“Yes.”

Steve steels himself. “Are you expecting to hear any answers?”

A quiet sigh is the first answer he gets. “I don’t know, Steve. The answers aren’t up to me. I just asked. I had to ask.”

“ _What,_ ” someone says behind him, incredulous one-word explosion, and the next thing Steve knows, there are large hands on his shoulders and he’s being turned around.

“Look,” Carol says, and Steve has no choice but to do as she says, because Thor is behind him, bracing him.

She’s holding the tablet up to his eye level, and the camera is zooming in dizzyingly, until the view comes to a stop and he’s looking right at Bucky.

Bucky, who is holding his phone up to his ear, who is looking right at the camera and waving.

“Wish you were here,” Bucky says, right to the camera, right into Steve’s ear. Somehow he’s still mostly clear, despite the rising cheers caroming around the stage, despite the burr in his voice, even as he adds, “Talk to you soon?”

“Yes,” Steve says, because what else can he say, after the song, after this, and when Bucky hangs up Steve can feel it in his bones like an album suddenly cutting to silence, and he says, “Thank you,” weakly, in Thor’s direction.

“You are welcome,” Thor says, and whatever he must see in Steve’s face makes him smile. “Good news, I take it? All right. I will take the others downstairs with me. You may stay here as long as you like, since you look like you might also need a moment to think. Come back down and join us when you are ready.”

“But the concert,” Steve says. “I don’t want to miss it.”

“You will excuse me for saying so, but it seems that you will miss it anyway, in the state that you are now in. So you may catch up later. Jane is recording the second half. Well. The whole thing.” 

“O-okay.” Steve stumbles over to the nearest chair, and watches Thor herd the others out, and the last thing he hears is Kate’s voice: 

“Bucky Barnes and - Steve. _Our_ Steve. Steve Rogers?”

“We know who he is,” Tony says, sounding like he’s rolling his eyes.

“You sure about that? Because now there’s this thing with Bucky Barnes and - ”

“And if you’re thinking we’re not gonna be supporting Steve _and_ Bucky, wow, Kate, seriously, get a grip - ” Carol’s voice sounds loud, too loud, purposefully loud.

Steve looks up, and he picks up his phone and sends her a message - “Thank you” - and now he’s left with his phone and the lingering voice of Bucky Barnes, the lingering strains of “Stephen Hall”, and he’s almost shivering, like a violin string that’s been plucked, ready and waiting for the next note - 

“Tony,” Steve says, and bolts out of the room after the others.

///

It’s dark inside the coffee shop, but Bucky, after the example of the two women sitting in one of the other corners, keeps both his baseball cap and his sunglasses on.

A mug of coffee and a small pitcher of cream on the table, next to his pen and a freshly-bought notebook. His phone is still blinking steadily at him, though the stream of notifications has died down somewhat, in the hours after one concert and the hours before another.

Mostly people are talking about his aside to the camera after “Stephen Hall”, and the song, too, is still a trending topic.

“Here’s your sandwich,” the disinterested-looking kid in the black button-down says, and Bucky mutters his thanks. 

He hasn’t said much since waking up from a sleep full of murmurs, of Bobbi clinging to Melinda and Peggy curled around them both, and Bucky sleeping right at the foot of his own bed because the others had claimed his pillows, and when Phil had come in with his laptop Bucky had talked to him via text message, in the interests of saving his already battered voice for later. _Going out for a long walk._

“All the way home?” Phil had asked.

_I hope not._

The coffee shop is on a quiet corner five blocks away from the hotel, and just around the corner from the Beacon, and the sandwich looks much better on his plate than it did on the menu, and his phone is beeping at him again.

The email is from Steve, but there’s no message to explain a blurry photograph of rippling blue and low-hanging white clouds strung out on lofty lines.

In response, Bucky turns the plate on which his sandwich is sitting, still untouched, and he takes a photograph of layers: dark bread, golden cheese, the startling deep beaded purple of blackberries.

A new message from Phil comes in just as Bucky puts his pen down and picks his sandwich up, and he licks berry juices from his lips as he reads: _Are you sure you don’t want to be on Tumblr, because I’m fairly confident_ the entire concert _has already been broken down into GIFs. Also, there are a lot of people yelling at each other online. Mostly about you._

Bucky grunts and lifts his coffee cup to his lips. _How do you know they’re yelling at each other? Audio and video posts?_

_No. I know about the yelling because THEY’RE TALKING LIKE THIS._

That makes him laugh, and put the coffee down, and then cover his face with both hands and laugh some more. They each do their own social media things, but Phil’s in charge of band-related business, and he always navigates the Internet as though it were some kind of minefield that stretches all the way to the horizon, and Bucky will never not find these kinds of interactions hilarious. Some days he thinks he might be able to talk Melinda, at least, into something like _Phil Coulson vs the Internet_.

He blinks when a shadow falls over the remains of his sandwich. There’s no way of knowing how much time has passed. 

“Hello.” A genteel murmur, sweetly commanding, and he looks up and sits up and puts a polite smile on for the woman at the next table. Lines in her face that deepen when she smiles, and dark hair shot through with gold and silver where she’s sitting just at the edge of a puddle of sunlight. Steel-framed eyeglasses on a slender chain. “I know you. Aren’t you someone famous?” she reels off, crisp accent, bright sharp consonants. 

“I’m sort of famous, yeah,” Bucky says. “I sing in a band.”

“A band that sings about topics in mythology,” the woman says. “And named for a fairly notorious woman, to boot. I should thank you, Mister Bucky Barnes. I teach at a high school around the block, and my pet topic is European history, and these days I get students asking me about the Angel of Assassination, just because they’d heard your music, or simply because they had friends who know of you.”

He can’t help but grin, and then cover his mouth, torn between laughing and feeling gratified. “I - thank you, ma’am.”

She smiles. “My nephews aren’t in town this weekend or they would have gone to last night’s concert, at the very least. Alas for family obligations. Funny how things work out, that it’s me who runs into you instead. Do you not have another performance later?”

“Yes, we do.” He reaches for his notebook and for his pen. “If you tell your nephews about today, they might not believe you - so, ma’am, if you don’t mind, maybe you could give me their names? I can write them a quick note - ” 

“Very kind of you, sir,” the woman says, and he thinks that someday he might actually write her smile into a song: it’s a brief thing, there and gone, but it’s more brilliant than all of the stars in a midnight sky. “My nephews are Billy and Tommy, and Billy has a boyfriend named Teddy.”

He carefully tears three pages from his notebook. Almost identical messages: _Hope to see you around - I’ll tell your aunt about where our next performances will be. Or you can ask the fan club for details. Tell them Bucky sent you._

The woman smiles and carefully tucks his notes into her purse. “You’re a good person, Mister Barnes.”

“I wouldn’t go that far - but thank you, er,” he adds, hastily, when she cocks her eyebrow at him. “Ma’am?”

“My name is Charlotte Xavier,” she says, and then she’s heading out, and Bucky’s so gobsmacked at the sheer _coincidence_ of her first name that her sleek wheelchair almost completely escapes his notice. He only spots it when she maneuvers out the door, and the reflective frame throws dazzling flares straight into his eyes.

After she leaves he has the place to himself for a while, and in that period of time he manages to accomplish little more than down most of his coffee. It’s a little past noon. He still has a couple of hours to kill before he has to head to the Beacon. No one in black button-downs in his general vicinity.

He orders a slice of chocolate cheesecake from the counter and ducks into the men’s room to wash his hands, and when he looks at himself in the mirror his very first thought is that he’ll have to apologize to the makeup artist. Or find a way to give her some kind of bonus. Likely both. He’ll have to talk to Phil.

Traces of blue makeup still on his skin, though they can’t distract from his bloodshot eyes. There are lines on his face, too, nowhere near as attractive as Charlotte Xavier’s, the lines of a man who’s been frowning far too much, the lines of someone who takes long walks and ends up in strange coffee shops as a result. There’s probably a good reason why the others had spent part of last night trying to coax him into sleeping at all. He hadn’t been very good at it.

His hands don’t look any better after the (mercifully) warm water has sluiced the sparse slick of soap-suds away. Dry and cracking skin, and his knuckles might look a little more knobbly than usual, and his nails are all uneven because sometimes he gnaws on them and sometimes he doesn’t bother to trim them, even though he should, even though he’d had them at least neatened up when they shot the Kings videos.

“I need a break,” he croaks into the tiled room, and his voice now sounds nothing at all like the smiles he’d been given by that unexpected encounter with a grave and beautiful woman named Charlotte.

He’ll have to buy lemons and honey and tea as soon as the night is over. After he’s slept. Or he’ll find a late-night bodega. He’s found stranger things and stranger places - and sometimes, strangers, period - at two-thirty in the morning, only mostly sober.

Someone is sitting next to his table, or they might actually be _at_ his table, when he steps back out.

Bucky growls softly, and there’s not enough light in the coffee shop which is really weird because it’s a bright sunny day outside and he can’t see the face of the man who might be looking at Bucky’s notebook - and Bucky growls, thinks about getting in people’s faces, and wishes Peggy were around to back him up.

Why is there something familiar about those shoulders?

And what is it with people walking around in leather jackets when the jackets don’t even fit?

Bucky tenses, fight or flight, and he wishes for Peggy _and_ Melinda, and storms toward his slice of cake. “Hey, pal, in case you hadn’t noticed, this table’s _taken_ \- what the fuck, _Steve?_ ”

Steve.

Here.

What?

How is Steve here, and why is he sitting at Bucky’s table, and - 

“Hi, Bucky,” Steve says.

His hands are on the table and they’re shaking, just a little, not enough to rattle Bucky’s coffee cup.

Ill-fitting leather jacket: it’s a little too narrow for Steve’s shoulders, even as the sleeves are a little too long for him, so the next thing that Bucky says is, “Maybe you should go back to the place that sold you that leather jacket and, I don’t know, burn them down, because - they couldn’t sell you something that _fit_?”

“It’s not my jacket,” Steve says, looking like he might want to sink through the chair and into the floor, which, Bucky is both interested in seeing it for himself and doesn’t ever want to see it happen. “It was literally thrown at my face while I was getting off the plane.”

“Plane?” 

Bucky drops back into his chair.

Takes in the blush that is slowly but steadily darkening on Steve’s cheeks. 

He blinks when Steve starts talking. “Yeah. Plane. I have a friend who owns a plane, and knows a pilot who can fly that plane, and I asked him for a favor. The friend, I mean. Tony. You met him. Music videos.”

“I - wish I could tell you I actually remember him,” Bucky says, slowly, still trying to process. 

Steve makes a face, then says, “You’ve got to be the first person I’ve ever heard say that about Tony.”

“I’m a little tired.”

“You look it.” Bucky watches Steve push the plate of cake in his direction. “Maybe you should eat something before you do anything else like listen to me.”

So Bucky picks up his fork. The chocolate cheesecake is really good: smooth tang undercut by dark chocolate and the butter-soaked crust. 

After four bites he’s feeling a little more awake and a little more human, and he’d like to raise an eyebrow at Steve - he refrains, and says, instead, prodding: “Okay, I have to say it’s pretty damn amazing to see you here - but Steve, am I allowed to ask _why_ and _how_?”

Steve ducks his head, a little, and the movement reveals that even the skin behind his ear is dark blush-red. “Like I said, there was a plane involved. I can drive, but I can’t drive all the way here from the lake house. You’d have been done by the time I got into Pennsylvania.” Bucky watches as Steve scratches the back of his neck. “Needed to go a little faster than that.”

“Must be nice to know someone who has a private plane,” Bucky observes.

“Tony’s fine in controlled doses.” Steve laughs, a little, shaking his head all the while.

Bucky remembers that laugh. Hearing it again now makes him want to slump over in relief - but if he does that he’ll face-plant into the cake, and that would be a waste of a really nice slice, so he props his chin up on one hand.

“I think Tony was making fun of me when he threw this at me,” and finally Steve skins out of the jacket.

Bucky laughs and he can’t help it. 

With the jacket gone he can see Steve’s black-and-blue-checked shirt - and, underneath, a t-shirt in a familiar shade of dark red. “Nice shirt,” he says, grinning around his coffee. Stone-cold now, but it’s still drinkable, maybe just a little too acidic for his taste. “Is that the one with the name on the back or at the bottom?”

It’s rather satisfying to see Steve blink and look down at himself. “Oh, right. You know about these shirts. Um, it’s the one with the name on the back.”

“Good choice,” Bucky says. He holds the fork out. “Cake?”

“I _am_ hungry, but you need to eat that.”

Bucky just shakes the fork at him.

He smiles when Steve sighs and takes the fork, and pushes the plate in Steve’s direction. “It’s pretty decent stuff. But Melinda and Bobbi are better at this whole desserts thing than I am. I just - it’s food, you know.”

“It’s good,” Steve says, frowning a little as he swallows another mouthful. “Not just decent.”

“It’s cake,” Bucky concedes.

“Or payback for coffee, last time?”

Bucky laughs. “I dunno, is that slice of cake equal to the weird coffee-tea- _thing_ you bought me? Because if it is, I’m seriously regretting that there aren’t any spices in that slice. Or marzipan bees on top.” He thinks about weird things to put on cakes. “The world’s smallest violin, maybe.”

Steve laughs again, bright surprised burst, and that, too, fills Bucky with relief. A laugh that _should_ go into a song.

He doesn’t realize that he says that out loud until Steve says, “Didn’t you just - do that? Write a song that had me in it? Or am I being an idiot?”

Bucky stares at him.

“You asked me why I came here,” Steve says, and his words are slow and steady but he’s starting to look like he’s staring at headlights barreling down the highway, headed right for him. “I came here because - because of the song. The song you sang last night.” Steve is looking down at the table, now, and Bucky watches him twist his fingers in a way that really doesn’t look good, and the only thing he can do right now is reach out for Steve.

Steve’s hands are almost a little too warm, and they’re still shaking, and Bucky can’t help but smooth his thumb over Steve’s knuckles - and then Steve sighs and closes his eyes.

“Please tell me I’m not an idiot,” Steve says, “or, actually, I might feel better if you told me I was one. I came here after pushing you away and. Well. Lost now.”

“You’re an idiot.” That’s easy to say.

Bucky gets up and moves his chair over so that it’s right next to Steve - and he does it with only his feet. His hands are still wrapped firmly around Steve’s. Easy things to do.

Steve is staring at him by the time he sits down again. 

And Bucky finds the words he’s looking for. “I’m only going to say this just once, so pay attention,” he tells a wide-eyed Steve. “You and I, we’re kind of not always okay, because you get messed up when your important people have bad things happen to them, because I have a really hard time believing people when they tell me I’m doing something well, and - have we really managed to piss each other off? No. We just - ” Bucky shrugs, tries to smile, and what comes out feels a little watery, but it feels right, too. “We messed up. And we might be getting over messing up. I like it a lot that we’ve been able to talk. I like talking to you. And I might actually believe that you like talking to me, too, because you tell me interesting things.

“As for that song. Well.” He licks his lips, feels chapped skin. “I started it a little before Kings. Before I saw that video of you that your friends put up.”

“Video?” He watches both recognition and a renewed blush flare up on Steve’s face. “Oh. ‘Labyrinthine’.”

“Yes. That.” Bucky forks another piece of cake into his mouth, offers the fork back to Steve, shrugs when Steve shakes his head. “If you’re going to be embarrassed, let me tell you, you’re a few weeks too late to do anything about it.” 

“Okay, so I can’t be embarrassed about that,” Steve says after a long pause full of complicated expressions. “And I can’t be embarrassed about ‘Stephen Hall’. Is that what you’re going to tell me next?”

Bucky smiles. “Sure, let’s go with that.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, and Bucky starts laughing, he just has to, because - where does he even _start_? 

“I hate feelings,” Steve says, next.

When Bucky looks up sharply, though, Steve is smiling and shaking his head, and moreover, he doesn’t seem to be pulling away. His hands are still warm beneath Bucky’s.

“I hate feelings because they’re hard to put into words.”

“And if you can’t put them into words, how the hell are you going to write a song?” Bucky adds. “And don’t tell me the answer is music, because that’s not how it works for me - ”

“It does for me. Work, I mean.” And Steve looks down as soon as he says it.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says. “Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“You didn’t, so don’t be,” Steve says.

And then Bucky’s phone rings. _Pegs_ on the screen. “I kind of have to take this.”

Steve smiles, and he looks sheepish before he looks away again. “Yeah.”

Bucky picks up with alacrity. “Peggy. Sorry. Lost track of the time.”

“Walk fast?” is her suggestion. “You can’t have gotten that far, fortunately, unless you’re actually at the loft.”

“No no no I’m not at the loft.” When he glances at Steve he has no idea what to do or say next. He feels a little like the fish he sees in the Asian markets, on ice, mouths opening and closing, no sound coming out. “Are you guys gonna get mad at me,” he asks, carefully, eventually, “if I bring someone backstage?”

“If that someone is not named Steve Rogers, I will be very mad at you.”

He pulls the phone away from his ear, and makes a face at his phone, which does not return the expression. “How the _hell_ did you know?” he hisses.

“Lucky guess,” Peggy laughs.

“I don’t believe you!”

“We’re not going to eat him, now come on, or Phil will have kittens.”

“I want to be late just to be able to see that,” Bucky says, grinning, and winking at Steve when he looks up.

“It’ll be the last thing you ever see, I can promise you that. Have you seen Phil when he’s angry?”

///

“This way,” the girl in the shirt that says _Beacon Theatre_ on the back says, and Steve pushes through the doors - 

Red and gold and the elaborately figured wallpaper. Carpet muffling his footsteps, but he can hear his own breath, strangely loud in his ears, as he remembers to inhale and exhale and - he also has to mind the cables snaking in neat bundles toward the stage -

“Steve,” Bucky says, and his voice calls up echoes from all over the place, harmonics and frequencies dancing around Steve. They’d separated on the sidewalk, on the corner of Broadway and 74th Street, and for a long moment Steve’d stared up at the marquee announcing _De Corday_.

Now, Bucky is waving to him _from the stage of the Beacon Theatre_.

Another voice. Black leather jacket. It’s much better-looking than Tony’s. “Bucky. Shut up. He’s having a moment. Don’t distract him.”

“Melinda,” is all that Bucky says as she crosses to the drum kit. He almost sounds fond.

Steve is torn between telling her that he wants to just stand here and soak things in, and telling her that Bucky’s not distracting him, but he can’t find the words, and so he just makes his way to front row center instead. Weak knees. He’s grateful to sit down.

What would it feel like, he thinks, dizzily, to perform here?

He would have been okay with just sitting here forever, soaking up the place, hearing imaginary Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi thrumming around him, when - 

“Sound check,” an unfamiliar voice says, a little raspy around the edges. “Stage mics, please.”

And Steve watches Bucky stalk around the stage, watches him grin and make faces at the people who are working at the consoles in the back of the theater, and has a terrible urge to provide him with some kind of background music. Something funny. Shostakovich, perhaps, or one of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. Would he appreciate the reference? 

He left the lake house so quickly and so suddenly that he doesn’t even have a change of clothes with him, much less his violin.

“Hello, Kings person,” a voice says from the row behind him, and Steve jolts, badly surprised. Bright flash of gleaming blonde hair - it seems to glow despite the sparse light in the the theater. “Fancy seeing you here. You’re, well, way the hell off campus.”

“I’m a dangerous escapee, please call the provost,” Steve deadpans, and he’s pleased when she laughs, loud and completely unreserved.

“I like you!” He watches her cup a hand around her mouth and shout at the stage. “Hey, Bucky, you keep this guy around, he’s funny!”

“People are not for keeping, Bobbi,” Bucky says from where he’s fiddling with some cables, “they’re not cans you put in a cupboard or something. And that was not the best thing I could have said in this situation. Steve? Please forget that I said that.”

“No,” Steve says, quietly, and his voice is drowned out by Bobbi’s “Nope!”

“Let me guess,” Bobbi says when she turns back to him, “three-day weekend?”

Steve shrugs. “Spring break.”

“Oh, right. Damn it, I don’t know why I forgot. I was in the same department as you, after all. Some days I wish I hadn’t left. But, well, different calling and all that, right?”

He has no idea what to say to that. All he can do is nod.

“Your turn, Bobbi,” another woman says, and Steve can’t help but stare at her fire-engine-red boots. 

“I don’t know why you bother doing the whole makeup song-and-dance, Pegs, you do _our_ makeup when we can’t get an artist,” Bobbi says as she gets to her feet. “Steve, right? Bucky’s Steve? Are you staying for the concert?”

Steve only has time to nod before she’s running off in the general direction of the stage and whatever’s behind it.

“I’m Peggy,” the woman says as she sits on his right side, precisely one seat away.

“I’m Steve,” he says, a little bit speechless.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised that you’re here, since I was just taking the piss out of Bucky earlier when he told me he’d run into you,” she says, and then she smiles, like a bright fluttering run of notes. “I do admit I’m curious as to how, though.”

“I have a friend with a private plane,” and Steve thinks he should stop there, because he didn’t tell Bucky the rest of the story - but this time he’s talking to Peggy, and it comes out of him, naturally, easily. “I heard the song last night, the surprise, and it was a sucker punch. It was like walking into a door. Or getting your hand slammed in a grand piano, not that that’s ever happened to me. I saw it happen to someone else.”

Peggy looks skeptical.

Steve hurries on. “I didn’t really know what I was going to do, next, and I just wanted to talk to my friend and see if there was some way to talk to Bucky properly, but just over the phone. I don’t have any baggage, I don’t have anything on me but my wallet and the clothes on my back and a lousy leather jacket that can’t fit me, because I didn’t know that when I went to talk to my friend I’d find myself getting flown cross-country. So I’m here. I think I need to buy a ticket for later, don’t I?”

Peggy laughs softly. “I’m afraid there might not be any more tickets to be had. When I went to find Bobbi I heard Phil talking to someone about a sold-out show. He must have been talking about tonight.”

Steve’s torn between wincing and offering a smile, and he does both, one after the other.

“Why does he look like that, Peggy, what happened,” Bucky says from where he’s sitting at the edge of the stage. 

“He wants to buy a ticket for tonight, and I told him we’ve likely sold out.”

“Ticket - oh, for a seat, right, but why are we talking about tickets?”

And then Bucky is getting up, is striding off the stage, and Steve watches him leap down the steps into the dress circle.

“Shouldn’t we be talking about tickets?” Peggy is saying. “If Steve wants to catch the show - I mean, he’s already here - ”

“Then he’s seeing it from backstage. That is, if you want to,” and here Bucky turns to him, odd lines in the corners of his eyes, and he looks like he’s a little on tenterhooks, which only makes sense if - 

Steve blinks, and gets to his feet, and makes a face at Bucky, because he can, because they’re here in the same spaces and it’s easier to do this when you’re not on opposite sides of an email exchange. “Do you honestly think I wouldn’t say yes to - what you just said?”

Bucky grins, and Steve has to grin back, because Bucky’s smile has been interesting right from the beginning, right from the coffee shop and the weird green tea drink. “I had to ask,” Bucky says.

“You asked and I said yes.” This is apparently happening.

“Great,” Peggy says, and she claps her hands, once, the sound sharp and echoing. “Now we’ve settled that, we can get on with the show. Bucky, makeup. Scrub your face very well before you sit down. Steve?”

He instinctively stands up straighter when she looks at him. “Yes?”

“We’ll be rehearsing as soon as Bucky’s done with the brushes and the eye thing,” and she draws a rectangular shape around her own eyes, “so if you’ll come with me?”

Should he talk to the others? Should he tell Kate and Carol and Jane first, or Professor Erskine? He wonders if Thor might be more worried about him, or Bruce - but at the same time, he’s following Peggy, and it’s just a step from the stage of the Beacon Theatre, past the rich red curtain, and into a tightly organized whirlwind of movement.

Some of the movements are even familiar to him, from performing on other stages. 

“Good to see you again, Steve,” Phil Coulson says. “Should I ask _how_ you got here?”

Steve opens his mouth and not a sound comes out because Peggy says, “He flew.”

“Okay, he flew, got it. Scoot,” Phil Coulson tells Peggy, and Steve watches her salute, smirking, before turning around and going back the way she came.

“I’m assuming you’ll have some way of going back to Kings after tonight?” he adds, looking up from his mobile phone. Despite the smirk there also seems to be something kind in his eyes, something that reminds Steve of Professor Erskine. 

So he says, “Yes, sir.”

“Call me Phil.”

Steve blinks and nods, and when Phil starts walking, he follows. More cables around them, and some of them are even moving, and there is something about this busy place that reminds Steve of the chamber orchestra when people are trying to find their seats, when they’re tuning up. A buzz in the air that is unfocused music. 

He flattens himself to the wall to get out of the way of two men carrying large black crates, and one of them mutters a quiet thanks, and then Steve has to hustle because in the time he’d been waiting for the men to pass Phil has gone through a door and into an even narrower corridor.

In here, every available surface has been cleaned - but he can still smell soft dusty fluff in the corners, and Steve covers his nose and mouth with one hand. 

“We’ll be out in a moment, this is just the fastest way to move around.” Phil pushes another door open and - they’re in the lobby of the Beacon. The woman walking into the ticket booth is humming something intricately swing-like, something he’s heard Clint whistle and tap his pen to.

“So,” Phil says, and Steve takes a deep breath, because this isn’t getting up to perform Vivaldi for the very first time. “You and Bucky?”

“We’re not anything right now,” Steve says, “but I like talking to him, and he says he likes talking to me, and - ”

“You want to be something. Now or in the future - the _near_ future, I hope,” and Phil does not actually look stern at all. It’s just the suit. What he looks like is amused. 

Steve nods, once.

“Okay, then. Is this still your number?” 

He blinks at Phil’s mobile phone’s screen. “Yes.”

“I’m sending you Bucky’s mailing address. Send him things, if you like. Or get your friend with the plane to fly you back here. Drive up. Maybe not that last one. I mean, you can drive from Ohio, I just don’t recommend doing it often.” A shrug. “You’ll think of something.”

Steve squints at the text message when it arrives, and then at Phil, and then at the doors that lead into the dress circle, and - “You’re not going to tell me to stop bothering him?”

A cocked eyebrow. “Why would I do that? We eat popcorn to the expressions on his face when you send him an email. I like my cheap thrills. Oh, and here’s another thing.”

Another message. This time, it’s not text - it’s a bar code of some kind. “You can go back in any time you want. That code’s for third row center in the orchestra. Show it to the ushers if they ask you for a ticket.”

“Whose ticket did you just give me?” Steve asks, bewildered. 

“Mine,” Phil says, and he claps Steve on the shoulder - Steve doesn’t move to stop him or dodge - and heads out through the other set of doors, the ones that open out onto Broadway.

Steve blinks, and looks around wildly for the restrooms, and he’s already calling Bruce as he goes. “Bruce? You’re never going to believe what just happened; _I_ don’t believe this is happening, and I’m here, and - ”

///

Bucky grins at the blur of screaming and strange faces and - deliberately steps away from the mic. 

He glances at Melinda as she bends to the drums, as she starts a long low ominous throb of a roll, and there’s a sharp whistle from somewhere in the audience, a scatter of applause, impatience and anticipation.

Peggy steps up and takes his place.

Melinda stops drumming.

A flash of total silence, of holding breath - 

And Peggy squares her shoulders, tilts her head back, fearless and bright and then she starts to sing, and the words are familiar and beautifully rising:

_I was left to my own devices_  
_Many days fell away with nothing to show_  
_And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love_

Slowly, slowly, picking up momentum as it goes, the roar begins to climb into the rafters - but even that is still no match for the sheer furious _power_ of Peggy’s voice, and by the time he and Bobbi and Melinda have joined in with a clash of harmonies she’s got the entire building eating out of her hand. She doesn’t sound like Dan Smith and she doesn’t need to, and Bucky is pretty damn sure that no one is going to try the “Octopus” trick on her.

Well, no one who’s sitting in the audience, anyway.

The lights go dark after “Pompeii”, and Bucky follows the others just into the curtains at stage left.

“More, more, more,” the audience chants, and for a moment, he wishes he could hear Steve’s voice in all that ruckus, as he did yesterday, when Steve had been somewhere else that wasn’t here, the only connection between the two of them the crackle on his mobile phone.

“Give it another minute,” Phil says.

“Microphone, please,” Melinda says, after two. 

Bucky grins, and steps up to her side, slings an arm around her shoulders as she takes a deep breath. A single note, steady and building and Bucky adds his voice to it and the noise in the theater is suddenly cut off by the time both Bobbi and Peggy have joined in.

“ _Labyrinthine lives lost and found and stolen_ ,” they sing, together. “ _Labyrinthine roads long and bent and winding._ ”

A spotlight on the stage. The same wooden bench as from last night.

Bucky grins and leads the others out and they all sit down, huddled together, and the song they sing is a little slower than normal, a whole lot out of breath - but it’s worth it, to see that glowing sea of mobile phones and cameras (and the occasional lighter, actual flickering flames waved gently from side to side) swaying for them, softly rippling waves of light.

Melinda sings the last verse all by herself, still without any accompaniment, and she turns the scream into a whisper of a note, gently held, so that not even Bucky can tell when she stops.

Silence that is broken, at last, by someone shouting, “ _Yeah!_ ” And that one voice is followed by a tumult of applause, an entire storm, and Peggy puts her head on his shoulder and Bobbi kisses him on the cheek and Melinda smiles, a satisfied sliver.

“Mic,” Bucky croaks, and when she hands it over, he only has enough left in him to say, “Thank you so much, New York City. Thank you. Good night, and thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.”

Something rumbles beneath Bucky’s feet that isn’t the cheering or the screaming or the relentless applause, and he looks up to see the great red curtains coming down, and the applause keeps getting impossibly louder and finally, he stands up and waves, and somehow - 

Somehow he catches Steve’s smile from the orchestra, pure wonder, and he has the terrible urge to ask Steve to pick him up and carry him home.

“You guys have been nothing but amazing,” Phil says, at last, when he joins them on stage, when the curtain’s completely down, and how he’s managing to juggle the enormous bouquets and the carrier of paper cups Bucky has no way of knowing. 

He sits down in a hurry, ears ringing from two nights of singing his heart out, from two nights of the others’ voices raised with his, from two nights of a full house and the roar of nearly three thousand human voices.

“Okay, we are not talking about these things tonight - you all look like your brains have leaked out your ears,” Phil says, looking sympathetic. “Drink your tea, then we’ll all go back to the hotel.”

The others nod. Not Bucky. “I wanna go home,” he says, almost slurs. He’s grateful for the bench, and for the others. “Brooklyn. Can I go to Brooklyn?”

Phil tilts his head, and looks like he’s thinking about it, and Bucky says, “Please?”

“You’re going to need help getting out of here.”

Bucky blinks when Melinda takes his hand. “Thanks,” she mouths at him.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You did,” she says, and she looks as mysterious as ever. 

Peggy is the first to finish her drink and he watches her carefully get to her feet. “Come on, the man promised us a hotel room. Who’s with me?” she mostly whispers, and Bobbi stands as well, followed by Melinda.

Murmuring from nearby, a voice Bucky knows.

“Great show,” Steve says.

“Thanks,” Bobbi says.

Steve?

Bucky pushes sweaty hair back from his face with an equally drenched hand, just in time to see a familiar shade of blue moving in his direction, and he doesn’t question it when he’s lifted gently to his feet and guided out, though he does manage to slur out, “Stage door. Out that way.”

“Okay, Bucky.”

Somehow, sitting huddled and shoulder-to-shoulder is familiar. 

Somehow, he can hold on to Steve’s hand, rough and gentle around his. 

Somehow, Steve knows where they have to go, because when the cab shudders to a halt they’re in Brooklyn, and there is a strain of familiar bass-beat thumping out of some of the windows, and Bucky can smell, through the haze of pure adrenaline crash, the East River and what he thinks might be the cool brick of the building in which he lives.

“Bucky?”

“Steve,” Bucky says.

“Keys?”

It takes him a minute, maybe more, to respond. “Chain. From the right pocket.”

“Thanks.”

Scritch and click and the hum of a lamp being turned on.

“Steve?” he asks, softly, when he catches sight of his bed.

“Bucky.”

“Stay,” he whispers.

“You sure you want me to.” Not a question. Steve doesn’t sound like he’s asking.

“Positive,” and that’s the last word Bucky remembers, because then he’s on the pillows. There’s a weight climbing in next to him, warm and welcome.

///

The first thing that Steve sees when he wakes up is a solemn-faced Bucky Barnes bear.

There’s one of those in his room, too.

But the difference between his room and this one is the warm pile of blanket and Bucky Barnes half-atop him, and by half-atop he means there are strands of Bucky’s hair in his mouth, and Bucky’s arms are wrapped around his waist, and there’s a softly damp patch in the shape of Steve’s own hand tucked between Bucky’s shoulder blades.

Now’s not the time to think about what could have been, what he’d missed, when he turned Bucky away.

Soft pillows, and the faraway shriek of river birds, muffled by the closed windows. 

Now’s not the time to think about having to go back to Kings, either, though he will have to see about calling Jarvis by day’s end.

Steve hitches Bucky closer. As natural a movement as it is to breathe.

He thinks maybe he needs to talk to Bucky, maybe he needs to listen to him, but this is pretty good, too: wrapped around each other at - Steve glances at the nearest clock - half past noon or something like it.

He must fall back asleep because the next time he opens his eyes, he finds himself with the bear version of Bucky Barnes in his arms.

And the real Bucky is wide awake and sheepish, sitting next to Steve’s knees, and he has the notebook from yesterday in his lap, and he’s writing in it.

Scribbled slapdash handwriting. _Can’t talk. Sorry._

Steve shakes his head. “Kind of not surprised. How long does it take you to recover?”

 _If I don’t talk today, I’ll be okay tomorrow._ More writing. _How you doing?_

“I’m okay. And you?”

Bucky shrugs, and bends back to his notebook. _I’ll be fine. Just tired. Exhausted._

Steve blinks. “Then why are you up?”

Bucky shakes his head. Shrugs. The next thing Steve reads is entirely unrelated. _Thank you. You held me. Felt nice._

“I liked it, too.”

 _But now we’re awake. Do we talk? Well, you talk, I can’t,_ and the words trail off into uncertain lines till they’ve gone right off the lined page. 

Steve sits up. “We can talk if you want.”

_Think we need to. We were a mess._

“Yeah, we were. We were moving on, though.”

_I like talking to you. Think I said that._

“I like talking to you too. Any way I can.”

Spark in Bucky’s face. He still looks a little drawn from last night, but there’s a nice red flush in his cheeks. _We can keep doing that. I want to keep doing that._

“Yes, please.” And then, Steve says, “Should I apologize?”

His response is Bucky shaking his head.

“Okay.” Steve takes in a deep breath, and passes Bucky his bear. “Now what?”

He watches Bucky brace the notebook atop the bear’s head. _Now what today or now what in general?_

Steve just stares at him. Hard to answer that question. He remembers Bucky’s voice ripped up with concern, with a grand piano just a few feet away. He remembers Bucky’s hands falling easily into “Everlong”. He remembers Bucky grinning in a caffeine-scented fug.

 _Too many questions?_ Now the corners of Bucky’s mouth are starting to turn down, starting to twist: withdrawal. Steve doesn’t want that.

So he closes the distance, until he’s sitting knee-to-knee with Bucky, until he can poke a gentle fingertip at the bear’s nose. “I would like to go out with you. If you want. Only if you’re interested. Um. I am. Interested in going out with you. I want to play all the songs with you.” He whistles a snatch of something that’s just come out - he’s not normally into Fall Out Boy, that’s more Tony’s thing, but there’s something powerfully compelling about the combination of the riff from “Tom’s Diner” and the intense scream of the lyrics.

Bucky stares at him, and Steve fidgets, but only until the Bucky Barnes bear is shoved into his lap and the letters on the next page are all crushed together in his hurry. _I wish I could talk. I want to tell you so many things. I could make you a mixtape. Do you think we could be friends who go out with each other? Or do we have to be one or the other?_

What is that hammering pulse he can hear? His own heartbeat. Frantic syncopated. 

“I think we just have to be - you and me,” and Steve has no idea how he was able to string those words together. 

_Me the rock star and you the soon-to-be star._ Bucky grins, throws the pen and notebook off to the side - they land with a muted clatter - and holds a hand out to Steve.

Steve stares at that hand, and for some reason he smells rosin or something very much like it, and - he does want to smile back, he does want to grab Bucky’s hand, it’ll be like new music - 

So he does, and Bucky’s hand is warm.

*****

**epilogue**

Two images in a mirror. Two sets of shaking hands. Steve thinks his collar is too tight. Bucky’s having problems swallowing against the neat Windsor knot of his necktie. 

Steve looks at Bucky’s mirror image and smiles, only a little self-deprecating. “It’s okay if you want to, I don’t know, duck out,” he says. “We can have burgers afterwards. Or see if that place you always go to is making lasagna. I hope I’ll get hungry later.” He’s missed breakfast and most of last night’s dinner. He never eats around a performance.

Flash of a frown. Bucky reaches for Steve’s hand. He thinks Steve feels a little like he’s been sleeping in a freezer of some kind, with the way his skin’s gone cold. He presses a kiss against one unsteady fingertip. “I’m not ducking out, Steve,” he says, patiently. This isn’t the first time Steve’s said that. He’d said it when the recital was announced, he’d said it after Professor Erskine had flown in to critique Steve’s performance (well, maybe not so much _critique_ as _praise_ ) and he’d said it at the final dress rehearsal.

He’s not ducking out. He says so, softly, against Steve’s hand.

Steve breathes. Controlled. Calm. Soothing repetition. That doesn’t stop the sweat from cooling and crawling down the back of his neck. He should be an old hand with recitals by now. Rushing reckless pinprick-fear down every nerve - it makes him reach out for Bucky, makes him whisper, “I wish you could hold me. But - suit - ”

“Never mind the suit,” Bucky says, and he knows he’s here to help bear Steve up, to help Steve feel better. He knows about Steve and recitals and performing to no one. He still has to be careful - they can’t crease Steve’s suit, since he’s going up on stage in it, since there’ll be lights focused on him and on his violin and on his music - but he pulls Steve closer. He hums into Steve’s ear. 

“I haven’t heard that before,” Steve says, stepping back, touching Bucky’s cheek. He hasn’t heard it in this form, is what he means. It sounds like one of the waltzes that he’d been learning for this recital. “Is it new?” That skin under his fingertips begins to warm as Bucky grins and scratches the back of his head.

“Caught me. And not really.”

“Is it going to be something new?”

“It’s going to be something new if you help me write it.” Bucky tries, he really does, but he has to laugh, softly, at the poleaxed expression on Steve’s face. “Come on, Steve, we’ve talked about this.”

“We have, but - ”

“Steve,” Bucky says, and Steve’s collar is already neat and pointy and stiffly starched but he smoothes it against Steve’s skin, anyway, and he smiles when Steve takes a deep breath under his fingertips, when Steve rises briefly up onto his toes and then comes down, standing maybe just a little more steadily. “You know how I write my music, right?”

A shaky laugh. “You write like you’re throwing the notes against a wall, waiting for something to stick.”

Bucky grins. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I told Pegs about what you do, when you’re practicing, when you’re improvising. And you’re a genius, because most of the time what you come up with sounds really good. As good as the actual stuff you play.”

“You’re only saying that because I play the violin, Bucky. Your piano’s just as good.”

“So let’s make them sing together,” Bucky says.

Steve stares at him for a moment, feeling his jaw sag towards the floor.

Bucky cracks up, stepping away and leaning against the wall, and every now and then he glances back at Steve and then he starts laughing again, all the harder. 

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Steve says, and he tries to look severe and knows he fails because he has to grin, and shake his head. Emotions rising, and he has nowhere to put them except on his lips, and from there to Bucky - to Bucky’s forehead, to Bucky’s cheek, to Bucky’s mouth, warm and welcoming with well-meant laughter. “How long were you waiting for me to set you up - ”

“Not telling,” Bucky laughs, and he kisses Steve again for good measure, smoothes his hands over Steve’s shoulders and down Steve’s forearms in apology when he finally has to pull away. What an exhilarating rush to see Steve lean in towards him, though this current Steve still looks perplexed and - in the corners of his eyes, in the depths, as skittish and fearful as a cat trying to decide whether it should come in out of the cold or not.

He thinks he knows something about being afraid of center stage, and he hopes he’ll be around to help Steve carry that weight for a while yet.

Steve sighs when Bucky steps away, hands out and up in the air, and he sighs and turns back to his reflection and the lines around his eyes. His gaze skitters around the little room. A rectangle of heavy paper next to Bucky’s hand: Steve has committed the words on it to inadvertent heart. His name, and that of Edward Elgar. The Violin Concerto: full of passion and power. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and dabs it carefully at his temples as he thinks of the cadenza that he’d spent so much time on, that Professor Erskine had critiqued very carefully. There had been a stretch during the rehearsals when that critique had gone on a note-by-note basis.

That part of the work is his and, he thinks, maybe Bucky’s, too. Deliberately inserted flourishes, nothing to give De Corday’s music away, but he’s heard those chords over and over again in Bucky’s hands. A ghost of an interpolation. Perhaps Elgar won’t mind. The original movements of the concerto are populated with Elgar’s own inspirations, after all. Steve is just following in his footsteps.

There’s a knock on the door, then, and Bucky reluctantly looks away from Steve’s hands. It only takes him a moment to cross the room. A girl in a suit, standing in the corridor. “Looking for Steve Rogers,” she pipes. “We’re almost ready for him. Oh, and there’s this,” she says, and she’s brilliant when she smiles, almost as brilliant as the lilies she offers. She must have been holding them behind her back. “Compliments of Professor Abraham Erskine.”

Bucky smiles, and looks over his shoulder, and Steve is already coming over. Soft light in those determined blue eyes. “Thank you,” Bucky says as he takes the flowers, and the page waves and turns away.

Rich lily scent. The flowers look opulent against Bucky’s suit, Steve thinks.

Bucky says, “I should go and sit down. That way you’ll see me as soon as you walk out on stage.”

“I kind of don’t want you to go,” Steve tells him, truthfully.

“I don’t want to go, either, but - I also want you to get out there.”

“I just hope I actually manage to get through the whole thing.”

Bucky beams. “You’ll do better than that. I think you’ll be amazing. I’ve watched you rehearse. You’re already pretty good with some of the orchestra. You’ll be great. You’ll be - ” 

Steve shakes his head and doesn’t fight the smile as Bucky closes his mouth and spreads his hands. “It must be bad if you run out of words.”

“It’s a good thing, Steve.” And then: “I’m here, and I’ll be in the audience, and all you have to do is play. Not for me. Play for yourself. Play because you have to. I’ll listen to you.”

“And after this - ” Steve gathers his courage. “After this we’ll write. Together. You and me in Brooklyn.”

“Yes.”

Bucky grabs his hands. Holds on, until he has to go.

And Steve picks up his own violin, and squares his shoulders, and makes his way through backstage, towards the assembled orchestra.

After he’s introduced, after he bows, he finds Bucky in the audience. He’s there. And so is the music.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2014 Steve/Bucky Big Bang @ http://stevebuckybb.livejournal.com/
> 
> The seeds of this BB lie in [this ficlet I wrote](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/92522588616/things-we-lost-in-the-fire-live-from-queens), set to "Things We Lost in the Fire (live from Queens’ College Cambridge)", performed by Bastille + Queens’ College Choir & Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra.
> 
> Enabling and cheerleading courtesy of [seratonation](http://archiveofourown.org/users/seratonation) \- therefore, this BB is for her.
> 
> Betaed by [afrocurl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl).
> 
> Huge thanks to [luninosity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity) for the never-ending support and love and pom-poms.
> 
> \-----
> 
> I am also on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/).


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